Claire White, 27, an intensive care unit nurse at Mercy Hospital Northwest Arkansas, used to care for one or two ICU patients a day. Now, as the delta variant of the coronavirus sweeps through the state, her workload has increased to three Covid patients a day, many of whom are on ventilators and need round-the-clock assistance.
It's the largest resurgence in Covid cases since January as the state tallies more than 2,000 cases a day. Arkansas also has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country — just 38 percent of its population has been fully vaccinated. The state reports a seven-day average of 19 Covid deaths, up by 64 percent from two weeks ago.
The increase in patients has worsened staff shortages in the state, Pennington said, adding that he hears from many people who say their hospitals could open more beds if they had the staffing to do it safely. Nurses are getting sick, too, but not from Covid-19 — from mental and physical exhaustion, he said.White said she has witnessed the high turnover rate firsthand.
He said he's grateful that the demand for vaccinations has grown. In early July, when Covid cases began to surge again, only about"We have seen over the past three weeks a tremendous resurge in demand for the vaccine and really have seen our vaccinated numbers rise," he said. Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, signed a law in April that banned government entities from imposing mask mandates. A judge last week temporarily banned, and as case numbers climbed in the state, Hutchinson said he regretted having signed it.
I’m an RN in S Fla. I care very much about my patients 12 hrs at a time, but I won’t suffer over ppl sucking on oxygen and unable to walk from the bed to toilet while still bitching that convalescence plasma is experimental and unapproved. Go home and figure out your own science.
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