Younger, unvaccinated COVID-19 patients fill ICU at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center
KING 5 is being admitted to an intensive care unit in Harborview, where staff is treating people between 30 and 40 with severe forms of COVID-19.
SEATTLE – Shortly after lunch on Tuesday, the concentrated calm of the COVID-19 intensive care unit at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle was interrupted by a rush.
A team of paramedics, nurses, technicians and doctors brought in a 40-year-old patient who was already on a ventilator whose condition was deteriorating.
“Now we almost only see younger people, we see people between 30 and 50, more than 90% of the patients, in fact all of the patients in our hospital are now unvaccinated,” said Dr James Town, medical director of the Harborview Medical Intensive Care Unit.
Town was halfway through his 12-hour shift and had a pandemic in about 17 months that is now revealing gruesome rhythms.
“The number of cases we have diagnosed in the community will go up, and about a week later we will see more hospitalizations, and about a week later we will often see increases in the death rate,” he said.
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There is his team now, with the advent of the Delta variant: more hospital stays and rooms full of patients struggling to breathe.
UW Medicine counted 59 inpatients for COVID-19 across its system on Tuesday. You still have room at Harborview and you can do more, but that’s not anyone’s goal.
“It’s been two years and I don’t know if there’s an end in sight. I think we’re all holding our breath now,” said Shelby Elizaga, a registered nurse who works in the intensive care unit.
She said she and her colleagues lean on each other to get through the more demanding days.
“We just want to keep providing the best care, and we do that every day, but some days it really takes a mental toll on all of us,” said Elizaga.
For some, the difficulty is that many of the serious cases in this latest chapter in the pandemic could have been avoided.
“People who should otherwise be in the prime of their lives who have no real medical problems can get away with COVID and very severe forms,” Town said.