Detroit hospital officials have stated that people died in the ER corridor before emergency services arrived. World and nation

Many ER patients are presumed to be Covid-19 positive because of viral symptoms, but hospital results said that processing the test results could take days.

The situation in Sinai Grace was so severe that on Sunday night, all night shift nursing staff in the emergency room (total of seven people) sat down, refused to work, and increased the number of nurses to assist. Requested. .

According to four health care workers, Sinai Grace’s patients are lined up in many corridors in the emergency room, not just in two rooms. Two workers said that critically ill patients, including ventilated patients, had sometimes been stuck in corridors.

According to institutional physicians, at least two patients with ER have died in corridor beds. Hospital healthcare professionals, including physicians, told CNN about anonymity conditions due to job concerns.

A doctor said, “Until it was too late, the nurse died in a bed in the corridor because he did not notice that he had no pulse.” “Each nurse has so many patients that by the time he sees the next patient, the patient may be out of pulse.”

Two ER workers told CNN that another patient’s respiratory tract was disconnected from the ventilator and the patient died before staff could respond.

According to Johns Hopkins University, Michigan has the third highest number of Covid-19 cases in the United States after New York and New Jersey. The incident soared from Wednesday afternoon to over 20,000, up from 300 a month ago.

With the surge of Covid-19 patients, many hospitals across the country are approaching or have reached their capacity.

To respect the privacy of patients and families, Brian Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Detroit Medical Center, said that the medical center will not provide or comment on specific patient care.

“It is important to understand that daily emergency rooms throughout the country are facing the challenges of dynamic situations, and even more so in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis,” he said.

The Detroit Medical Center did not address the specific situation raised by hospital workers, but provided CNN with a long description explaining the difficult situation.

“As with many hospital systems, the need to care for an ever-increasing number of patients is burdening our resources and staff,” Taylor told CNN in a statement. “Our hospital has a surge plan in place to handle the growing number of patients, ensuring that patients receive the safest and most appropriate treatment.”

Taylor says that the Sinai-Grace emergency room has more traffic than any other hospital in Metro Detroit and is the only hospital in Northwest Detroit. There are also a number of nursing homes nearby, and the hospital is accepting more severely ill patients, Taylor said.

The number of patients at Sinai Grace “is very high in underlying conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, so people are at increased risk for COVID-19,” Taylor said.

The hospital uses all available space, including a converted operating room, outpatient area, and recovery room to handle surges, Taylor said. We are also working on moving patients within the system from hospital to hospital or to other hospitals in the area.

“We use safe and proper care for the necessary consumables and equipment, including monitors and ventilators, to care for patients, and as the number of COVID-19 patients in need of care continues to grow, On an ongoing basis to procure additional consumables in his statement.

However, according to three healthcare workers, Sinai Grace’s workers said that as the number of patients increased, hospitals did not have enough heart monitors to sound alarms when patients’ vital signs changed. is.

Staff had to make tough decisions about who would get the monitor.

“We did our best on the monitor,” said one ER worker. “But we have some patients that we know will pass, so we take them off the monitor and [it] Need someone else [it]”

According to the worker, one unmonitored patient died in the ER hallway. By the time staff recognized that the patient had died, the patient had shown signs of postmortem rigidity.

According to two ER employees, if a patient is on the monitor and the alarm starts to sound, the staff may not always be available in time.

According to ER employees, in at least two cases, despite the monitor alarm, the hospital was very busy and the patient died before the nurses arrived there.

“(The nurse) walked to them, but there was no pulse,” said one ER official. “They were on the monitor, but there were too many to see everyone safely.”

For patients, especially the elderly with high risk factors for Covid-19, two ER workers called CNN, and Sinai Grace staff called the elderly family and said, “DNR is not resuscitated to patients.” I encourage them to make it. ” DNI (not intubated). “

That is, if the patient suffers from respiratory or cardiac arrest, staff will not intervene and attempt to pass the patient.

According to three members of the ER staff, hospital employees are not working on resuscitation of some patients who have or are suspected to have Covid-19 during working hours. According to one worker, performing CPR or restarting the patient’s heart exposes employees to Covid-19.

CNN called the patient’s family and specifically asked the ER staff’s policy not to resuscitate the estimated Covid-19 patient, but Taylor did not respond directly.

There is no policy to ban resuscitation across the hospital, DMC Taylor told CNN.

“When it comes to deciding whether a patient will receive CPR, these decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis by physicians and medical teams,” Taylor said. “Of course, if a patient needs CPR, they will receive CPR.”

Another ER worker states, “We do our best to be next to them when they pass, but often all nurses are busy with other patients.”

According to two hospital staff, if a patient dies, the staff must quickly move to a temporary refrigerated warehouse that brought the patient.

“Because it was non-stop, we have to put people next to each other and on top of each other,” one said. “I will do my best to close their eyes and say a little prayer.”

Ventilated Covid-19 patients are usually kept in isolated rooms, according to multiple healthcare workers throughout the United States who CNN spoke to. This is because the ventilator can aerosolize the virus (especially if the ventilator tubing comes off), and the virus spreads through the air.

Two healthcare workers said that the corridor stretchers had a very large number of patients, even scattered electrical cords and oxygen tubes. They say they have to keep cords and tubes in the hallway, they say. That’s because they’re all things needed to make patients (some of them seriously ill) survive.

According to four health workers, the hospital is still treating entry and ambulance arrivals, including non-Covid-19 patients.

“The hospital may look like a Third World country in a war zone,” one of Detroit’s emergency medical technicians who transferred the patient to Sinai Grace told CNN.

“Walking feels creepy,” EMT said. “Nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapists are running around, everyone is in a stairwell, all stairwells beep, and patients have multiple infusions. It is a military hospital in a war zone. I thought. “

CNN’s Ryan Young and Jake Carpenter contributed to this report.