My colleagues who are primarily responsible for the care or the most serious covid-19 patients in the ICU are burning out and need help from the community. It is very disturbing and stressful to see people who are on ventilators and dying every day who, if vaccinated, would not be in the ICU and probably not even be in the hospital. The ICU staff is doing a great job of helping these patients and their grieving families, but this process has been ongoing 24 hours a day and seven days a week for several months now.

There was a break from having so many patients over the past summer. In fact, our overall numbers then were 5-10 covid patients per day through a three-hospital system, with maybe one in the ICU. From late September through October, the numbers rose steadily to 60-80 patients per day, and through November and December there were 90-130 patients per day, with on average 10-25 covid patients in the 3 ICUs.

What is remarkable is there are virtually no fully vaccinated patients in the ICU.

Almost all the death and suffering is occurring in patients who are not fully vaccinated.

Imagine seeing and working on patients and discussing their fates with their loved ones, always knowing that a simple, safe vaccine would have prevented all the misery. Vaccines that have been given to over 160 million Americans and over a billion people worldwide safely.

It is very simple. The more people are vaccinated, the fewer people get life-threatening covid-19 or are even admitted to the hospital. The more people are vaccinated, the fewer people get covid-19 and the spread of the virus decreases. Data shows that even if one has had covid, vaccination decreases the severity of reinfection and keeps people out of the hospital.

For the past several months, there has been a severe nursing shortage because of nurses leaving from covid burnout, needing to stay at home and other pandemic-related effects. Our hospitals have fewer staffed beds, and those beds are occupied by predominantly unvaccinated covid patients. As such, we have been forced to delay needed surgery on patients with serious conditions. Unvaccinated covid-19 patients are clogging up the hospitals and causing more burnout and more people to leave health care.

If you are unvaccinated, please get vaccinated ASAP to help us.

Dr. Michael Culig

Greensburg

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