Hospitalizations Declining In WA, But Severe Cases Stagnant

OLYMPIA, WA — COVID-19 hospitalizations are on the decline across Washington, but not at the pace health care workers had hoped for, according to the lasted update from the Washington State Hospital Association (WSHA).

1,025 COVID patients were hospitalized across Washington as of WSHA's briefing Monday morning. That's down from 1101 hospitalizations a week before — a good start, but health care workers say it needs to pick up the pace.

"It's good that they're declining, and we wish that they were declining faster," said WSHA President and CEO Cassie Sauer.

At the same time, severe COVID-19 cases are almost totally stagnant: as of Monday, 184 Washington patients are on ventilators, just one less than reported at the briefing Oct. 11.

"This is a number we'd really like to see going down faster, because once patients are on a ventilator, as you've heard on this briefing before, their chance of survival goes down pretty significantly," Sauer said.

Because severe hospitalizations have not declined, this also means the state's death toll remains unchanged— between 10 and 15 Washingtonians have died of COVID-19 complications every day for the past week. That's why, Sauer said, this is not the time to become complacent about the pandemic.

"It's still a ton, I think I want to really emphasize that," Sauer said. "If someone was shooting ten to fifteen people per day, or there was a car that malfunctioned that caused crashes that killed ten to fifteen people a day in our state, I think the response from the public would be tremendous."

At Monday's briefing, Sauer and other speakers appeared less concerned than they had been in previous weeks about the possibility that COVID patients could overwhelm the state's health care system, but did express some worry about the state's vaccine mandate and how it may impact health care.

"We very much are in support of the requirement that all health care workers be vaccinated," said Dr. Tim Dellit, Chief Medical Officer for UW Medicine. "We need to maintain a safe environment for our patients and our staff. At the same time, the last couple of weeks coming up to the 18th have been very anxiety-ridden."

Gov. Jay Inslee's vaccine mandate required that Washington's 400,000+ health care providers be fully vaccinated, or receive an exemption on medical or religious grounds by Oct. 18, or else risk losing their positions. WSHA says that hasn't been a huge problem for its members — a recent survey found just two to five percent of hospital staff would leave the workforce because of the vaccination requirement — but that it may cause problems in long-term care facilities and among first responders, where vaccination rates are lower.

"We don't want to lose any of our valued workers," said Delitt. "Although, at the end of the day, there are going to be people who, unfortunately, no longer will be with our organization."

Delitt estimated that UW Medicine would lose about 220 employees by Tuesday. UW Medicine employs around 26,000 people. As for WSHA, they plan to launch a second survey to determine their losses some time in the next few weeks.