The narrative of good and wise blue states and foolish and reckless red states is complicated by the actual facts on the ground.
While the country has been justifiably focused on the dire situation in Afghanistan for the past week, the U.S. is quietly hitting another bad spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations – not merely cases, but hospitalizations. And when lots of people get hospitalized for COVID-19, sadly, some of them do not pull through. The seven-day average of daily new deaths in the U.S. has crept back up, from 241 new deaths on July 6 to 703 new deaths yesterday.
As of Tuesday, the U.S. had more than 91,000 people in the hospital for COVID-19, which is the highest since February 4 – when the U.S. had administered just 35 million doses of the vaccine, compared to 358 million doses administered by today.
What should really worry us is that we’re seeing hospitals hit capacity even in states that have high vaccination rates. The COVID-19 patients in hospitals are overwhelmingly unvaccinated, although not entirely.
We might expect to see full ICUs and full hospitals in states like Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and Texas, where the vaccination rate ranks among in the lower half of all states. (Florida is around the middle of the pack with 50.7 percent of residents fully vaccinated, and 61.7 percent of residents have at least one shot.)
By and large, Democratic-leaning states have higher vaccination rates. But that hasn’t prevented certain hospitals in those states from reaching capacity. It doesn’t take a particularly high percentage of the local population to be unvaccinated to fill up a hospital’s intensive care unit, or to fill all the facility’s beds entirely.
Hawaii is 54 percent fully vaccinated, but more than 72 percent of residents have at least one shot; that latter figure ranks third out of all 50 states. But for having so many Hawaiians walking around with at least some vaccine protection, the numbers there are surprisingly grim: “Hawaii’s largest private hospital system’s intensive care units are functioning at or near capacity this week amid an alarming surge of coronavirus cases on the islands, a hospital official said. Some ICU beds were open at The Queen’s Health Systems hospitals Tuesday, but the units were ‘completely full’ on Monday, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.”
Oregon is 56.8 percent fully vaccinated, with 62 percent of the population with one shot — about twelfth-best out of the 50 states. But that state’s hospitals are feeling the squeeze: “Oregon hospitals on Wednesday had just 41 adult intensive care beds available statewide. That’s 6 percent of the state’s total supply of 652 intensive care beds. Availability varies from hospital to hospital and region to region. Some hospitals, especially in southern Oregon, are entirely out of intensive care beds.”
Washington state is 59 percent fully vaccinated, 66 percent of the population with one shot — about tenth-best out of the 50 states. Yet that state’s hospitals are characterized as “near the breaking point.”
“The increase in COVID-19 cases in Washington state has brought a growing number of infected patients to medical centers seeking care along with a spike in visits to the intensive care unit as many regional hospitals say they are at or near full capacity, state health officials report. Meanwhile, KOMO News confirmed that St. Peter Providence Hospital in Olympia had to divert ambulances on Thursday saying, “Current inpatient census is extremely high.”
There are other full hospitals or ICUs — at least for temporary periods — in Visalia, Calif., Crawford County, Ill. and Lansing, Mich.
Vermont stands as the nation’s vaccination champion, where more than 67 percent of residents are fully vaccinated, and more than 75 percent have at least one dose. Once you take out children under age 11, who cannot yet get vaccinated, more than 85 percent of Vermont’s residents have at least one dose. And yet even that state reported 758 cases this week, a 41 percent increase over last week. Vermont’s hospitals are in relatively good shape — 29 people hospitalized with COVID-19, and just nine in the ICU — but the surge in cases demonstrates that the Delta variant is just spectacularly contagious, even in a region where the vaccination rate is particularly high.
Once again, the narrative of good and wise blue states and foolish and reckless red states is complicated by the actual facts on the ground. Yes, getting vaccinated is a very good thing to do, and residents of blue states are getting vaccinated at higher rates. But even a high vaccination rate is no guarantee that the local hospital will not run out of room if the number of local cases gets high enough.