The US Covid crisis is deepening with oxygen running out in the southern states and “talking dead” patients unable to go on without machines.
The US Covid crisis is deepening with oxygen running out in the southern states and “talking dead” patients with lungs ravaged by the virus unable to continue without ventilators.
Hospitals in Florida, South Carolina, Texas and Louisiana are struggling with oxygen supplies becoming scarce, with one Florida hospital reporting a terrifying trend among lung-damaged patients.
The southern US supply crisis follows severe shortages in countries like India, South Africa, Indonesia, Nepal, Iran, Malaysia and the Philippines which threaten the “total collapse” of health systems.
The dwindling supply chain which is starting to affect other aspects of life in the southern states is coinciding with an alarming new fact for Delta variant patients.
“The ‘talking dead’ didn’t make sense to me until I saw it first hand,” Tallahassee Memorial Hospital senior clinical office Dr Ryan Smith told CNN.
“It’s how quickly they decompensate when they don’t have oxygen.
“The rest of the world can’t see what goes on behind these doors. I had my first few patients look at me and say, ‘Don’t let me die.’
“As soon as you remove them from the devices they no longer made it.
“To watch how quickly they dwindle down is the hardest thing for me.”
CNN reported that patients “who are still awake … still conscious” were having “very difficult conversations with their doctors and their nurses”.
The patients, who had suffered lung damage from Covid, were “facing that very tough reality that if that life-sustaining equipment that’s breathing for them is removed … they could be dead in a matter of minutes”.
As hospitalisations due to the Covid Delta surge continue to soar, so has the demand on the oxygen supply.
Hospitals cannot keep up the pace to meet those needs, CNN reported, and are at risk of having to use their reserve supply or face running out of oxygen imminently.
In Florida, more than 17,000 Covid patients who require supplemental oxygen to stay alive are now hospitalised across the state.
“Normally, an oxygen tank would be about 90 per cent full, and the suppliers would let them get down to a refill level of 30-40 per cent left in their tank,” said Donna Cross of health care performance company, Premier.
This would ordinarily provide a supply buffer of between three and five days.
“What’s happening now is that hospitals are running down to about 10-20 per cent, which is a one- to two-day supply on hand, before they’re getting backfilled,” she told CNN.
“Even when they’re getting backfilled, it’s only a partial supply of about 50 per cent. It is a very critical situation.”
Covid-19 brutalises the lungs, interfering with the transfer of oxygen from the air into the bloodstream, which is needed to keep the heart, brain, and other vital organs working.
Optimum oxygen saturation for the blood is above 92 per cent, and once it drops below 90 per cent, doctors should put a Covid patient on supplemental oxygen, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said.
Once a person gets below 90 per cent, they usually start feeling shortness of breath, but Covid plays a “nasty trick”.
With Covid, people are arriving at hospital with symptoms like coughing, fatigue and fever, but unaware their blood oxygen level has plummeted.
They likely needed supplemental oxygen long before they showed up at a hospital, but because of Covid’s “trick”, some people don’t get the sense they’re having trouble breathing.
“If you’re coming into the hospital with a critically low oxygen saturation of 70 per cent, you have missed a huge opportunity to start lifesaving treatment early,” Nona Sotoodehnia, a Washington University School of Medicine cardiologist told Wired.
“What is surprising in Covid is the degree to which people aren’t uncomfortable with this critically-low oxygen they have.
“That’s the key difference between Covid-19 and other lung pathologies.”
As Covid cases in the US south surge, driven by thousands who remain unvaccinated and the Delta variant infecting millions of Americans, the oxygen shortage is affecting ordinary life.
In Tampa Bay, on Florida’s gulf coast, citizens were asked to cut back on water use because oxygen normally used to clean up the water supply was being diverted to hospitals.
Tampa Bay Water trucks in liquid oxygen, which it converts to ozone, one of the most powerful disinfectants in the water industry.
At its surface-water treatment plants, the ozone kills bacteria and viruses, and at a different plant it breaks down hydrogen sulfide, the naturally occurring rotten egg gas.
Tampa Bay Water’s liquid oxygen supply has been reduced by about half so it utility has asked customers to cut back on watering lawns, washing cars and other activities.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp, Elon Musk’s aerospace manufacturer known as SpaceX, may delay rocket launches due to the shortage of liquid oxygen.
Last Saturday, Florida had the country’s highest Covid-19 hospitalisation rate in the country, with 75 patients per 100,000 residents in hospitals with the virus.
Federal health and Johns Hopkins University data revealed another pandemic peak of 690.5 new cases per 100,000 people each day from August 20 to August 26.
ICU specialist Dr Ahmed Elhaddad told CNN the Delta variant was “eating” people’s lungs.
“We’re seeing the patients die faster with this (Delta) variant,” he said.
“This round, we’re seeing the younger patients – 30, 40, 50-year-olds – and they’re suffering. They’re hungry for oxygen, and they’re dying. Unfortunately, this round they’re dying faster.”
Dr Elhaddad said he was frustrated and tired from “seeing people die and suffer because they did not take a vaccine”.
Studies had shown that full vaccination was necessary for optimal protection against Delta.
Florida has fully vaccinated 52.4 per cent of its total population, while the numbers in South Carolina, Louisiana and Texas are fewer than 50 per cent of people.
In Louisiana, the arrival of Category 4 Hurricane Ida will only complicate matters, with possible injuries from the storm threatening to overwhelm health facilities already nearing capacity with Covid patients.
In May, it was reported that at least 19 countries around the world were running out of oxygen due to a huge increase in demand since March.
Countries in Africa and Asia faced oxygen shortages before the pandemic, Guardian Australia reported, and India was most critically lacking in supply.
Countries have demanded that companies which produce liquid oxygen divert products from their industrial clients to hospitals.
Medical oxygen makes up just 1pc of global liquid oxygen production.
candace.sutton@news.com.au
