Greenwood Leflore Hospital’s intensive care unit remained full Thursday, as hospitals throughout Mississippi scramble to cope with an influx of COVID-19 patients.
The Greenwood hospital was treating five patients with the virus, and the rest of its lone operating ICU was taken up by other patients with serious illnesses or injuries.
The five were isolated in negative pressure rooms, a type of room that keeps patients with infectious airborne diseases such as COVID-19 away from other patients and hospital staff who are not involved in their treatment.
As explained by the British-based website News-Medical.Net, negative pressure rooms work by keeping the air pressure inside the infected patient’s room lower than the air outside it.
“This means that when the door (to the room) is opened, potentially contaminated air or other dangerous particles from inside the room will not flow outside into non-contaminated areas,” the website says.
“Instead, non-contaminated filtered air will flow into the negative pressure room. Contaminated air is sucked out of the room with exhaust systems, which are built with filters that clean the air before it is pumped outside of and away from the healthcare facility.”
Mississippi health officials announced this week that the state had maxed out its ICU bed capacity as a result of the surge in COVID-19 cases fueled by the state’s low vaccination rate and the emergence of the highly contagious delta variant.
The situation has become so critical that the University of Mississippi Medical Center is converting a parking garage into a 50-bed field hospital to treat COVID patients from around the state who don’t require intensive care. The federal government is sending medical professionals to help staff it.
The Washington Post reported that 10 additional ICU beds would be made available at Veterans Administration medical centers in Jackson and Biloxi as well. The state Health Department has also inquired whether Navy ships might be available to provide medical help.
Until last month, Greenwood had been operating a second ICU unit dedicated to solely treating COVID patients. It closed the 14-bed unit when the number of COVID patients dwindled and as it became harder to find enough nurses to staff it and other areas of the hospital. A national nursing shortage has compounded the difficulties hospitals have faced in dealing with the latest wave of COVID-19. Mississippi Today reports that the state has around 2,000 fewer nurses working than it did a year ago.
Greenwood hospital officials say there have been discussions about reopening the COVID-unit but it has not decided whether to do so.
In the meantime, if there are no available beds in the ICU for new COVID patients, they stay in the hospital emergency room and are treated there until ICU beds open up.
On Thursday, the state Health Department reported 4,412 new cases of COVID-19, the highest one-day total since the beginning of the pandemic last year. The number of COVID patients hospitalized and the number receiving ICU care also set records.
Leflore County added 41 new cases of the virus but no new deaths. The county had gone almost four months without a COVID-related death before two patients died at the Greenwood hospital Sunday from the virus.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
