Nursing home, healthcare worker in front of the Idaho vaccine line

Rebecca Boon, Associated Press

Has been updated

Friday, December 4, 2020, 10:01 EST

Boise, Idaho (AP) — Healthcare professionals and nursing home residents will first receive the coronavirus vaccine when it becomes available in Idaho within a few weeks.

The first batch of Idaho vaccines arriving around December 15 will probably only total about 13,650 doses, with more doses likely to follow in the coming weeks. This is not sufficient to vaccinate all healthcare professionals who interact directly with COVID-19 patients, or all caregiver residents at high risk of serious illness complications.

Nonetheless, the announcement from the Idaho Ministry of Health represents a light of hope for the state, where hospital leaders are working on what the hospital leaders call “crisis standard treatment” because of the high coronavirus infection rates. .. Which patients can get life-saving medical care — can be enacted as soon as Christmas comes.

It is not yet clear how much vaccine will be sent to Idaho in the first few weeks. Dr. Carolyn Bridges, a former CDC physician who consults with the Idaho Department of Health, will be a member of the Idaho COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Board at a meeting on Friday, allowing the state to receive 75,500 additional doses of Pfizer and Moderna. He said he had sex. Vaccine by the end of the year.

According to data from the Idaho Department of Health, Idaho has approximately 44,600 hospital and clinic staff that may be critical to caring for COVID-19 patients and maintaining hospital capacity. The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the state has approximately 30,000 long-term care facility residents and staff, but the state’s estimates (including home care providers) are much higher.

Local public health districts and state leaders find ways to persuade Idaho residents to follow basic recommendations such as wearing masks, social distance, and hand washing to slow the spread of the virus. I’m having a hard time. Members of the Central District Health Commission met on Friday to consider whether masking should be required, extracurricular sports should be stopped, and nursing homes should be closed to visitors to the most populous areas of Idaho, including Boise. The draft order would have allowed the violation to be punished for misdemeanor.

But, as has become commonplace in recent weeks, meetings were interrupted by angry, screaming protesters, who sometimes tried to push them into the building. Instead, board members made some changes to the proposal and voted to review it next week. The new draft order will be released on Saturday morning.

Hospitals in Idaho have been bullied on the verge of being completely overwhelmed by a pandemic in recent weeks as the coronavirus spread throughout the state, sickening healthcare workers and filling hospital beds with COVID-19 patients. .. The St. Luke’s Health System, Idaho’s largest health system, had so many patients this week that it was on the verge of having to divert all visiting patients elsewhere for some time, said Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Jim Sousa said.

“We will move the mountains before detouring,” Souza told the board. “We were so close, and it was some unexpected deaths that escaped us.”

According to Sousa, the healthcare system is like a swimmer who can barely keep his head above the water, even if he steps on it as quickly as possible. He said additional outbreaks would drown the system.

Idaho’s hospital system increases the capacity of COVID-19 patients, postpones non-urgent surgery, increases the number of patients each nurse has to care for, and returns some patients earlier than normal discharge. We have already taken drastic measures to make it happen.

St. Luke’s now forces some COVID-19 patients and others to leave the intensive care unit 3-5 days earlier than others, send oxygen home as needed, and take the iPad out of bed to the doctor. I always try to contact you. , And other devices such as oxygen level monitors that automatically send information to hospital data centers for remote monitoring.

According to Sousa, about 150 patients have been “remotely monitored” in St. Luke’s over the course of several weeks and are ready to increase that number to about 300 at any time.

The decision by Idaho’s COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Board to make the first few batches of vaccine available to healthcare professionals and care facilities by keeping workers safe and protecting high-risk patients. The focus is on increasing the capacity of the hospital. Care facilities are a potential hotbed for coronavirus infection, forcing many to refuse to accept COVID-19 patients. COVID-19 patients can otherwise be transferred from hospital beds to long-term care facilities.

State epidemiologist Dr. Christine Hahn said making the first few batches of vaccines available to both groups could help address the hospital problem, which is overwhelming in two ways. It was. Pharmaceutical companies are expected to rapidly increase vaccine production and distribution once the federal review process is complete, and more doses will be brought to the state in the coming months.

“This is a very quick launch, so I think the first you spread this vaccine, the better it will actually be,” Hahn said.

At least 108,366 coronavirus infections have been reported in Idaho since the outbreak of the pandemic. This includes over 1,900 new cases reported on Friday. At least 1,032 residents have died of COVID-19.