Health officials and systems in Portland and Southwest Washington are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst after Thanksgiving.
“I think we’re in for a difficult few weeks ahead,” said Multnomah County Health Officer Dr. Jennifer Vines, the lead health officer for the Tri-County region. “And really, we want the health care to be there when the people need it.”
PeaceHealth Columbia Network Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lawrence Neville said it's expected that cases in the Longview and Vancouver areas will increase by 20-40% in the next two to four weeks.
While many canceled plans and scaled back celebrations over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, there was plenty of holiday travel in the Pacific Northwest and across the country.
Portland International Airport (PDX) saw its most travelers over the Thanksgiving weekend since the pandemic began. Preliminary numbers show travel was down 67% compared to 2019’s record Thanksgiving weekend.
Over 10 days of holiday travel, PDX saw about 199,500 travelers. Their business travel day was Sunday with about 20,000 people coming through the airport that day alone.
It’s well short of 2019’s record-breaking 640,000 Thanksgiving travelers during the same 10-day period last year.
West Coast states ask people who traveled out of the state to quarantine for 14 days at home.
However, health officials aren’t just concerned about travel. Dr Vines says any socializing outside of your household poses a risk.
“We have enough virus here locally that, I think, people need to be looking at their Thanksgiving holiday, even if they stayed here, and be really watchful for symptoms,” Vines said.
If you start to feel any change in your health, Dr. Vines says to stay home, start thinking of people you’ve been in contact with who may have been exposed and arrange for a COVID-19 test.
Those tests, however, are not as easy to come by as they once were.
“I think the situation we’re finding ourselves in locally is that testing is getting stretched and it’s really reserved for those people who have symptoms,” Vines said. “We’re also reserving it for people with known exposure, known close contacts, so that we know sooner than later where the infection has spread so people can get ahead of it by isolating and quarantining.”
The biggest concern with a major spike heading into Christmas is that it could overwhelm hospitals.
“What I can say is that hospitals are quite full. They’re very busy. The limitation is not so much beds and ventilators, it’s really staffing,” Vines said. “As staff gets exposed and infected in their day to day life, they’re having to isolate or quarantine at home. And so, it really becomes a difficulty in finding caregivers for people who are going to need care in our health system.”
That’s a concern at PeaceHealth in Vancouver and Longview. They have contingency plans for front line physicians in the emergency room and intensive care unit (ICU).
“So that if, God forbid, one of them became ill or their family member became ill with COVID, that we would have the ability to backfill their position with other qualified physicians to keep care going,” Dr. Neville said.
PeaceHealth provided an update Tuesday on hospital capacity.
Dr. Neville says PeaceHealth is in “reasonable shape” when it comes to hospital capacity in Vancouver, with 285 total patients out of their 340-patient limit. That leaves 55 beds still open.
Right now, they’re treating 42 COVID patients at their facility in Vancouver, four of whom are ICU patients.
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“We are concerned, as are many public health officials, that we may see a pretty significant increase in COVID patients in our communities over the next two to four weeks in particular, and we are doing surge planning in relation to that.”
PeaceHealth is updating operations ahead of the possible post-holiday spike. The Vancouver hospital has cordoned off a section of the hospital specifically for COVID patients.
St. John Medical Center in Longview has not been admitting COVID patients, instead treating them at the ER and moving them to the Vancouver campus. That is changing. PeaceHealth will have a COVID-19 unit in place at St. John by Thursday.
The combination of flu season and COVID is also a big factor when it comes to surge plans.
“If those two add together and combine to produce hospitalizations beyond what our communities can tolerate, we will be in a place that none of us wants to contemplate,” Neville said.
PeaceHealth saw its first patient co-infected with both COVID-19 and the flu.
That brings on new challenges and concerns about the crossover of flu season not just for hospital capacity, but treating patients.
“It is concerning because you do have two different viruses that attack the body in very different ways, and they can both effect some of the same systems,” Neville said. “A drug that many really benefit someone with COVID may actually worsen somebody who’s got influenza or flu.”