Doctors in Hospital

Patient Stabs Doctor in Face and Head Inside Pennsylvania Hospital

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A doctor is recovering after she was stabbed in the face and head inside Pennsylvania Hospital.

Police say the doctor was treating a patient inside the hospital on 800 Spruce Street on Tuesday when the patient stabbed her multiple times. The doctor is currently in stable condition while the patient was arrested.

A Penn Medicine spokesperson told NBC10 the hospital is working closely with Philadelphia police in response to the incident and that the doctor received immediate care.

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Covid Vaccine

Tennessee Hospitals: State’s Vaccine Rollout Plan Isn’t Enough To Keep Sites Open

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — The state’s top health official describes Tennessee’s progress in meeting the need for the Covid-19 vaccine as “nowhere close.”

With a towering demand, this month our weekly shipment of doses is going up 15%.

State Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey said on Tuesday starting this month, Tennessee will receive 93,000 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine every week.

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Coronavirus Warning Sign

L.A. Has Avoided A New York-Level COVID-19 Hospital Meltdown as Conditions Improve

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Just weeks ago, Los Angeles County’s hospitals were overwhelmed and on the brink of a worst-case catastrophic scenario, with plans ready if doctors needed to ration healthcare.

But with the region now in its fourth week of declining hospitalizations, it was clear Wednesday that the county was decisively on its way out of its third surge of the pandemic, its deadliest yet.

Yes, hospitals this week are still under pressure — scheduled surgeries are still suspended, and there’s still a shortage of medical staff, with hospitals relying on nurses drafted from clinics, contract agencies and the federal and state governments. L.A. County’s hospitals are still under great strain, with nearly three times as many COVID-19 patients as it did during the peak of the summer wave. The state has opened up two surge hospitals — in Sun Valley and Hawaiian Gardens — that have been used to relieve the strain on other facilities.

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Nurse Stressed Out

North Carolina Hospitals Brace For Growing Impact From COVID-19 Cases

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DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) — Last week, North Carolina saw record COVID-19 hospitalizations, with at least 3,992 patients battling COVID-19 statewide last Wednesday. But those hospitalizations didn’t affect all parts of the state equally.

An analysis of the latest data from the US Department of Health and Human Services shows more COVID-19 patients occupied beds in Triangle hospitals last week than they did a month ago.

At Duke University Hospital in Durham, 82 COVID-19 patients were admitted to the hospital between January 8 and January 14. That week, 98% of the hospital’s 740 adult inpatient beds were occupied on average each day, an increase from 93% the week before. According to the data, an average of 113 adult COVID-19 patients occupied those beds each day, meaning COVID-19 patients occupied 16% of all inpatient beds, up from 10% a month ago.
Doctor with vaccine

Hospitals and Businesses Are Offering Incentives To Those Hesitant About Getting COVID-19 Vaccines

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While millions have eagerly awaited the arrival of coronavirus vaccines, hoping they’ll help restore a sense of normalcy, many others, including some health care workers, still appear concerned with their efficacy.

Less than a month after vaccines by Pfizer and the Moderna COVID-19 were granted emergency use authorization, hospitals and state officials are reporting that some doses are being left unused. For months, polls have revealed that some Americans remain hesitant to take the vaccine, with many concerned that it was developed too rapidly.

“I am definitely concerned that health care workers are electing to wait to get vaccinated,” Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a briefing last week.

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Hospital Building

U.S. Health Officials Push Hospitals To Administer Unused Covid Antibody Drugs

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The U.S. has shipped over half a million doses of antibody treatments that have the potential to keep high-risk Covid patients out of hospitals if given early enough in their infection.

This would help already overburdened hospitals avoid additional strain, but the drugs are still being underutilized despite their promising results, Trump administration health officials said Thursday. That’s because many patients don’t know how to access them, and hospitals aren’t prescribing the medications or arranging the infusion sites necessary to administer the drugs, they said.

“I want my colleagues to hear me,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams told reporters. “You need to think about and be willing to prescribe these medications much more frequently as a way to protect your patients, preserve your hospital capacity and to support your exhausted colleagues.”

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COVID-19 Virus

WHO Warns New Covid Variants Are ‘Highly Problematic’ and Could Further Stress Hospitals

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New, more contagious mutated variants of the coronavirus are “highly problematic” and could cause more cases and hospitalizations if the virus’ spread isn’t immediately suppressed, the head of the World Health Organization said on Monday.

The global health agency was alerted over the weekend of a new Covid-19 strain discovered in Japan, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing. On Sunday, Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases said it discovered a new coronavirus variant in four travelers arriving from Brazil.

The variant appears to have some of the same mutations as other strains discovered in the United Kingdom and South Africa, the institute said. Those virus mutations, while highly infectious, don’t appear to make people more ill from the virus, health experts have said.

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Coronavirus Patient

Oxygen is The Latest Covid Bottleneck As Hospitals Cope with Intense Demand

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As Los Angeles hospitals give record numbers of Covid patients oxygen, the systems and equipment needed to deliver the life-sustaining gas are faltering.

It’s gotten so bad that Los Angeles County officials are warning paramedics to conserve it. Some hospitals are having to delay releasing patients as they don’t have enough oxygen equipment to send home with them.

“Everybody is worried about what’s going to happen in the next week or so,” said Cathy Chidester, director of the L.A. County Emergency Medical Services Agency.

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Doctors in Hospital

Hospitals Are Already Overwhelmed. Now Some States Are Beginning To Feel The Impact of Holiday Gatherings

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Parts of the US are beginning to feel the brunt of last month’s holiday celebrations — at a time when many hospital systems are already at their breaking point.

Experts warned that holiday travel and gatherings could help fuel another surge of Covid-19 infections. Yet millions of Americans traveled anyway — with more than 1.3 million people, a pandemic record — screened by the TSA on Sunday alone.
That’s as the number of Covid-19 patients in hospitals on a given day hit another US record Monday, at more than 128,200, according to the COVID Tracking Project. And some states are warning the worst may be yet ahead.
Hospital

US Hospitals Facing Worrisome Shortage of Nurses, Doctors

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SAN FRANCISCO — With so many states seeing a flood of coronavirus patients, U.S. hospitals are again worried about finding enough medical workers to meet demand just as infections from the holiday season threaten to add to the burden on American health care.

California, which is enduring by far its worst spike in cases and hospitalizations, is reaching out to places like Australia and Taiwan to fill the need for 3,000 temporary medical workers, particularly nurses trained in critical care.

“We’re now in a situation where we have surges all across the country, so nobody has many nurses to spare,” said Dr. Janet Coffman, a professor of public policy at the University of California in San Francisco.

Hospitals in some states have enlisted retired nurses and students. In Alabama, more than 120 students and faculty members from the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s nursing school began helping with care last week at UAB Hospital.

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