COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho — North Idaho's major hospital has the highest COVID-19 inpatient volume in the state and it's forcing the hospital to tighten visitor restrictions.
As of Tuesday morning, Kootenai Health in Coeur d'Alene is reporting 69 coronavirus patients hospitalized for and 29 of those patients in critical care. Its COVID-19 inpatient volume is more than double that of the inpatient census of the next busiest hospital, St. Alphonsus in Boise, with 30 COVID-19 patients.
“With the trending cases climbing, we are rapidly exhausting our staffing resources,” Kootenai Health CEO Jon Ness said in a press release Monday. “The COVID-19 hospital census is rising at a faster rate than it did last winter. If this trend continues, in just five days we will surpass our previous COVID-19 high census from December 2020.”
Starting Thursday, Aug. 12 each non-COVID patient will be allowed one visitor per day. Visitors must be healthy and wear a mask while on campus. Hospital officials said patients will be allowed one visitor per day in inpatient areas and the emergency department, unless the patient is COVID-positive or waiting on a COVID test result. For patients who require a caregiver to communicate and/or make health care decisions, the caregiver will be considered the one allowed visitor.
The only exceptions including birth center mothers may also have a doula, pediatric patients may have two parents or guardians, patients who are in end-of-life care may have four visitors in a 24-hour period, two visitors at a time and behavioral health patients will be allowed visitation through technology.
The Kootenai Health COVID Testing Center is also extending its hours.
Starting Friday, Aug. 13, testing center hours will be 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. You must have an order from a health care provider to be tested, according to the hospital.
According to Kootenai Health, since the beginning of the surge 97% of all COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalizations at Kootenai Health are unvaccinated. The hospital has been running at near-maximum capacity since early spring of 2021.
“We have postponed many elective procedures over the last several weeks due to hospital capacity,” Kootenai Health Chief Nursing Officer Joan Simon said in a press release. “We are now postponing all elective procedures that can wait for six to eight weeks so we can redeploy staff to care for hospitalized patients.”
The Panhandle Health District is encouraging people to get vaccinated as coronavirus cases continue to rise in all five North Idaho counties.
In a press release Monday, PHD Public Information Officer Katherine Hoyer said since early July positivity rates have been increasing in Kootenai, Bonner, Boundary, Benewah and Shoshone counties. They’ve ranged from 5% to 23%. Hoyer said levels above 5% typically indicates not enough testing is happening in a community and the virus is circulating more than is known. As of Monday, Hoyer said PHD’s jurisdiction averages 113 cases per day. In early July, they were averaging 16 cases a day.
The Idaho Bureau of Laboratories is reporting an increase in the delta variant across the state among clinical samples tested. Hoyer said PHD received the sequencing results of clinical samples submitted for residents in the five northern counties on Friday. Of those tests, she said 86% had the delta variant.
“We can safely assume that there are much more variant cases circulating in our area that have not been sequenced due to constraints the state faces with available laboratories,” Interim PHD Director Don Duffy said in a statement. “Information on the Delta variant is concerning - with transmission being possible after only a few seconds of exposure for those non-vaccinated and transmission able to occur when someone is in the pre-symptomatic phase. Unfortunately, these variants will lead many more people to become ill and possibly suffer long-term impacts on their health. Even those vaccinated can contract the Delta variant (unbeknownst to them, as they may not show any symptoms) and then they can become carriers of the virus to those that are unvaccinated. In these circumstances, being vaccinated doesn’t just benefit you – it’s protecting those around you and their loved ones as well.”
Hoyer said 38% of the population over 12 years of age in PHD’s jurisdiction is fully vaccinated and many of the measures aimed at curbing the spread of the COVID-19 have been relaxed. This leaves a large portion of the community vulnerable to COVID-19.