The number of COVID-19 patients at The University of Kansas Health System is slightly lower today. 22 people with the active virus are being treated, down from 25 yesterday. Of those patients, seven are in the ICU, up from six yesterday. Five of those patients are on ventilators, the same as yesterday. Ten other patients are still hospitalized because of COVID-19 but are out of the acute infection phase, same as yesterday. That’s a total of 32 patients, down from 35 yesterday. HaysMed has one active patient, the same as yesterday.
On today’s Morning Media Update, Dr. Steven Simpson, Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine specialist and President of The American College of Chest Physicians explained the link between viral sepsis and severe COVID-19.
Dr. Simpson, a world-renowned expert on sepsis, says you don’t hear much about it, but before COVID, it affected 1.7 million Americans each year, killing an average of 350,000. It’s the single most common cause of needing to be in the ICU. He explains that sepsis is an infection in which your immune system, in his words, “has gone off the rails,” and is causing damage to your own organs. It’s the body hurting itself as it attacks the bacteria or virus. So COVID sepsis has now become common as the body responds to that virus. But he says the treatment is harder for COVID-19 since the usual treatments for sepsis, antibiotics, don’t work. People in their 60’s and older and overweight are most at risk, especially if they have other chronic conditions like diabetes, kidney or lung disease and if they are unvaccinated against COVID-19. It’s also common for sepsis to cause blood clots, just like COVID-19. He says early identification and treatment are key and discussed signs and symptoms to look for. Those include rapid heart rate or fast breathing. He also says severe cases of the flu cause sepsis and is the cause of death when someone dies from the flu, which is why flu shots are vital every year. He says it alters a person’s life in many ways, and people are at especially high risk of going back to the hospital within 30 days of being released for sepsis because of weakened immune systems. He says the pneumonia vaccine, especially in older people, can help prevent sepsis and death from pneumonia. He advises everyone to always ask your doctor, “Could this be sepsis?” because many doctors who don’t treat ICU patients are not as familiar with it. He reminds us that sepsis has always been with us, and before penicillin, was the single largest cause of death.
Dana Hawkinson, MD, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control at The University of Kansas Health System, thinks we might have seen a plateau in the number of COVID-19 cases around the Metro area, but says we need to see what happens in the next few weeks as we see the effects of looser restrictions on masking and gatherings. He says nobody wants to have COVID-19 sepsis and the way out of that and to protect you and the community is to get vaccinated.
David Wild, MD, VP of Performance Improvement at The University of Kansas Health System, sat in for Dr. Stites. He says all but two area hospitals report increases in COVID-19 patients in the last few weeks. One went from two patients to 30. He pointed out that emergency use authorization for the Pfizer vaccine for those 12 to 15 may come any day, and vaccine for those under 12 may be available by this fall. He says in the meantime, there are plenty of doses available and urges anyone with questions about the vaccinations to talk with their primary care doctor to get the answers they need to help with their decision to get vaccinated.
Thursday, May 6 at 8:00 a.m. is the next Morning Media Update. Dr. Mitchell Douglass, medical director of the Marillac Campus, specializing in inpatient mental health care for children ages 4-17 and Psychologist Dr. Danielle Johnson will join to talk about youth and mental health. Marillac is sending 150 suicidal teens away per month. They’ll tell us how the community can help.
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