Nancy Lindell:
Hello, this is Nancy Lindell. I am the public relations director for Mission Health. And I’m here today with Dr. William Hathaway, the chief medical officer for Mission Health and HCA’s North Carolina division. We are having a COVID update today and the reason behind that is because we are starting to see a lot more patients in the hospital.
William Hathaway, MD:
That’s exactly right Nancy. Distressing to see the numbers rise, our highest number of patients hospitalized at Mission was in mid January 140 patients at Mission hospital. Two weeks ago we had dipped down to under 10 hospitalized. And then in the last 10 to 14 days, we’ve seen just an explosion, not just here at Mission, but across the state and across the country and now we have about 40 across the health system hospitalized right now.
William Hathaway, MD:
I think there’s a number of factors that have contributed to the rise in cases, the number of people in the state who are vaccinated is not where we want it to be. We’re doing very, very well in the elderly population. Above 65 the state numbers suggest that over 80% are fully vaccinated, but as you go down the age groups and look at all adults, it’s in the 50 to 60% range and then all people it’s less than 50% in large part because children haven’t been eligible yet but we’re not where we need to be. That magic number for her to immunity is upwards of 75 or 80% and we just aren’t there. So we have a susceptible population of people who are out there able to get infected. That’s number one.
William Hathaway, MD:
Number two, we’ve backed off on our masking and then we had a holiday. So July 4th was about three weeks ago now. When people gather together, they’re not masked, they’re not vaccinated, we expect the cases to rise and that’s exactly what’s happened.
Nancy Lindell:
I’ve also read where the Delta variant is fairly prevalent in the state of North Carolina, and that it is more contagious than the initial coronavirus. Is that correct and could that be a contributor as well?
William Hathaway, MD:
Very, very good point. It’s exactly the case. We know that the Delta variant is perhaps three or four times as contagious as the original variant. In order for those variants to develop, they have to replicate in people. If we are able to cut down the number of people who get infected, the likelihood that we’ll develop additional variants decreases dramatically. So it’s critically important that we stop the spread of infection.
Nancy Lindell:
Several of our North Carolina hospitals have determined that they are going to make the vaccine mandatory for their employees.
William Hathaway, MD:
We absolutely, 100%, believe that everybody who’s eligible should be vaccinated. That being said, the vaccines are still under emergency use authorization. Until we get full what we call biologic license approval we don’t want to mandate that people get vaccinated. But we encourage everybody, everybody, staff and patients alike and their family members alike to take advantage of getting the vaccine.
Nancy Lindell:
We are still employing universal masking in our hospitals, we’ve just changed our visitation because of the increased number of patients. Can you talk about the safety of our hospitals?
William Hathaway, MD:
The safest place to be is in a hospital because we know that 99.9% of the people will be masked. We are ratcheting up our masking policies again, wear masks all the time whenever you’re in the hospital. Because of the increase in cases, we’ve unfortunately have to modify our visitation policies. We were allowing two visitors per family member, we’re cutting that back to one visitor per family member, with the ability to stay in the hospital overnight. We’re going to continue to screen people at our doors and we’re going to re-institute universal face shields. We have plastic face shields to protect our staff when they have clinical encounters with patients. So in response to this rise in cases, we’ve ratcheted up our response to how we’re going to protect people within our walls.
Nancy Lindell:
And we have over 30 people in Mission Hospital in Asheville on the COVID unit, the visitation there remains at zero. If you’re on the COVID unit, you are not allowed to have any visitors.
William Hathaway, MD:
That’s absolutely correct.
Nancy Lindell:
Our staff has been for the past year and a half caring for, as you mentioned, a spike of people in January of 140. We don’t want to get there again. That’s a lot of illness and it’s a lot of care for people who can’t have any visitors.
William Hathaway, MD:
Right now we know that of all the patients who are being infected and hospitalized about 97% are un-vaccinated and only 3% represent those breakthrough cases. And so I encourage everyone do the right thing, not just for yourself, not just for your family, not just for your friends, but for the people who are working in our facilities. Providing not just COVID care, but care for heart attacks and strokes and broken hips and traumas and all the other things that are going to continue to happen.
Nancy Lindell:
As far as the breakthrough cases go that in some instances like with the Olympic athletes and that kind of thing, testing for the virus is done on asymptomatic people. So you know that you’re finding breakthrough cases, but they’re not people who are sick from the virus.
William Hathaway, MD:
Yeah. The breakthrough cases are not the problem right now. The problem is the un-vaccinated part of our population. We know that the vaccine absolutely does work. And even if it doesn’t work completely to prevent infections in some people, it decreases the severity of their illness, taking what could have been a life-threatening illness into one which is far less severe.
Nancy Lindell:
We’ve opened back up again and started living our lives but 50% of the people when I’m out and about are not masked.
William Hathaway, MD:
If the cases continue to rise, there’s only one thing that we can do to immediately shut it down and that’s go back into some form of a lockdown. Nobody wants that. So let’s get out in front of it. Let’s put the masks on now. If you haven’t been vaccinated be sure to wear a mask. Even if you have been vaccinated, I’ve been vaccinated and I continued to wear a mask when I’m in the community.
Nancy Lindell:
You’re fully vaccinated and have been since the beginning of the year, why would you be wearing your mask?
William Hathaway, MD:
I know that my likelihood of getting severe illness and, or getting infected at all is dramatically reduced, but it’s not zero. It’s not zero. That’s just a fact. And I don’t want to be part of the chain of transmission of carrying that virus that I might get asymptomatically infected with or have a mild illness where I could infect someone who’s much more susceptible than I am. And I have elderly family members who live in the community that come to our house on a regular basis, we have people in my family who have health concerns that put them at increased risk for infections and I’m just not willing to take that chance. And I’m not willing to take that chance for people I don’t even know. It’s easy for me to wear this. It’s a minimal sacrifice to keep someone not just healthy, but alive.
Nancy Lindell:
I think one thing we should discuss, if we’re talking about vaccines, if we’re advocating for vaccines, can we talk about the safety of them? What is the real science behind this?
William Hathaway, MD:
The science behind it is that the vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and effective. We know that there are some minor side effects that people will get fever, chills, malaise, just not feeling their best selves, but those go away in 24 to 48 hours, they’re minor and you can take ibuprofen or Tylenol to help alleviate those side effects. There is no way that these vaccines can alter your DNA, it’s just scientifically impossible. There is no data at all that says they affect fertility. In fact, you can actually get vaccinated while you’re pregnant. The Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines that we use in this country, they’re exceptionally safe and effective.
Nancy Lindell:
I’m sure, especially at here at the end of July with some summer still before us, we do not want to end up where we were last year. What would be your parting words for our watchers today about how we can keep ourselves safe and keep ourselves from lockdown?
William Hathaway, MD:
In summer we know the transmission rates are going to be lower because we tend to share viral illnesses, respiratory viral illnesses, less in the summer than the fall. So this rise in cases right now makes me particularly nervous about the fall, because when we’re closer together, tighter confines, colder weather, that’s flu and cold season, flu, cold, and COVID season, we’ll be much more likely to have an even greater rise. So let’s take this opportunity right now to get vaccinated, get your friends together, get your family together, get past that hesitancy, call us up and talk to your doctor or to healthcare workers, we’ll walk you through your concerns. We appreciate those concerns, but we want to alleviate them. And if you’re not vaccinated, and even if you are vaccinated, do the right thing and wear the masks and minimize the chance that you could be spreading a virus to your friends.
Nancy Lindell:
Thank you, Dr. Hathaway. If you have any questions about COVID or looking for a place to get vaccinated, please go to Missionhealth.org and click on the red bar at the top for all the COVID-19 information we have there.
