Cook Children’s leaders sound alarm as COVID surge, exhausted staff stretch resources
A combination of the delta variant, sick and exhausted staff, and worried parents has left Cook Children’s health care system in dire straits, a team from the health network said during a Wednesday press conference.
“I get paid, and everything in my training and career, was not to freak out. But I’m freaking out,” said Dr. Corwin Warmink, his voice breaking with emotion.
On Monday, 601 kids showed up to Cook Children’s emergency room, compared to a typical seasonal average of 300 kids in a day, said Warmink, the medical director of emergency services.
“At 600, we’re physically unable to care for kids in a timely fashion,” he said.
As the U.S. experiences the fourth major surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the more infectious delta variant and paved by uneven vaccination rates, hospitals throughout Texas are nearing or breaking records set earlier in the pandemic. This time, however, children are also getting seriously ill - and sometimes dying - from the disease more often than in prior phases of the pandemic.
At Cook Children’s, an influx of patients and severe staffing shortages forced the network to close one of its urgent care clinic locations in Hurst and to shorten hours at other clinic locations throughout the region. Dr. Kara Starnes, the medical director of Cook Children’s urgent care services, said providers were staying until the early hours of the morning to handle the surge in cases. Starnes said employees were themselves getting sick with COVID-19 or other diseases and needed to stay home, or else were burnt out from the relentless work of the last 18 months, during which more than 630,000 Americans have died from the respiratory disease, according to federal data.
“We don’t typically close our facilities,” said Wini King, Cook Children’s senior vice president of communications, inclusion, diversity and equity. “This move should sound an alarm, or it should be like a canary in the coal mine, for what may be to come if we don’t take measures, as a community, to slow down the spread of COVID-19.”
A COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which will require all employees of Cook Children’s to be vaccinated against the disease by Sept. 27, has not yet contributed to any employees leaving, Starnes said.
The health system has requested 18 pediatric nurses from the state, King said. So far, only four nurses have been dispatched because not enough have the pediatric training required to work at Cook Children’s. The health care system is also postponing some elective surgeries on a case by case basis, hospital leaders said.
Much of the increased caseload has been driven by worried parents seeking a test or needing answers after their child has been exposed to the respiratory disease.
Starnes and Warmink both urged concerned parents not to turn to emergency rooms or urgent care centers simply to get a rapid test, or because their child had been exposed to COVID-19 and was suffering minor symptoms. Instead, parents should go to a location meant specifically for COVID-19 testing or to their child’s primary care doctor, they said.
Although COVID-19 is still most worrisome among older adults and adults with pre-existing conditions, the delta variant is undeniably infecting more kids than its predecessors, said Dr. Susi Whitworth, the medical director of infectious diseases. The combination of the delta variant, a return-to-school season with varying mask usage among students and teachers, and the fact that children under 12 are not currently approved to receive a COVID-19 vaccine has left the group especially vulnerable.
“Most children are fine when they get COVID,” Whitworth said. But “not all of them.”
The number of kids and teenagers requiring hospital beds has increased so much that Cook Children’s has added a third COVID-19 unit, Whitworth said. There are currently 39 COVID-19 beds and more will be added if necessary, Whitworth added.
Throughout the pandemic, Cook Children’s has treated 241 kids in the intensive care unit with COVID-19, Whitworth said. There are seven children in the health system who have died from the disease, including a four-year-old and a 15-year-old who died in the last week.
The team repeated two tenets public health officials have belabored for months: Universal masking and vaccination are the clearest ways to end the current situation, which the health system is hoping will improve before flu season starts.
“The scary part for us is, when is this going to end? And trying to see a light at the end of the tunnel. And the concern is that the light at the end of the tunnel is flu. And it’s barreling down at us,” Warmink said. “And so that keeps me up at night.”
This story was originally published September 1, 2021 at 5:00 PM.
