Better than 16 months after the COVID-19 pandemic came to Lyon County, health officials are continuing to battle mitigation hesitancy.
That was one of the topics that came up during the Newman Regional Health Board of Trustees meeting last week. Chief Executive Officer Bob Wright says things are changing on the vaccination side, albeit slowly.
Wright says one major misconception is people suffering widespread allergic reactions to the different components of the vaccine, notably the binding materials used in that process. Wright says the vast majority of reactions are from the body’s immune system instead, which is how vaccines are intended to work.
Wright also says there was no guarantee the vaccines would prevent people from getting COVID-19 or perhaps getting reinfected if they got the virus before they were vaccinated. The promise, he says, was vaccines would severely reduce the chances of a serious infection, hospital stay or death.
Wright’s comments came as hospitals in larger cities across the Central Plains, including Kansas, are having their bed space drastically curtailed or completely eliminated due to the recent surge in COVID cases. Lyon County Public Health Emergency Preparedness Director Jennifer Millbern says this is affecting local patient transfers.
For now, Newman Regional Health has not decided to resume its eight-bed COVID Care Unit that was in use at times last year.
Newman Regional Health has consistently been under three COVID-related hospitalizations per reporting period for months, but the hospital is now starting to have its staff using personal protective equipment once again so they don’t get sick or transfer the virus to others in their care. Nurse Julie Glass says the bed shortage extends to Texas and Arkansas, affecting patients with broken bones, immediate cancer intervention and other emergencies including COVID-19 care. RSV is now spiking across Kansas — three weeks ahead of the start of school locally — with at least a handful of cases at Newman Regional Health over the last two weeks. Glass says numerous places in the Central Plains are also battling a nursing shortage, making it difficult to handle the recent influx of patients.
