Health care leaders discuss omicron impacts with the Clark County Board of Health

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Clark County’s health care system is strained due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as leaders from hospitals and medical groups urged greater support from its elected representatives on efforts to combat the disease.

During a Jan. 26 Clark County Board of Health meeting, the board — which is made up of members of the Clark County Council — heard from several chief officers at local health care providers about how the omicron variant of COVID-19 has impacted operations.

Alan Melnick, the Clark County Public Health director and county medical officer, said Clark County and the state of Washington have seen dramatic increases in cases and hospitalizations.

PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center Interim Chief Medical Officer Raymond Lee said his hospital has been at capacity every day through the current surge.

“Every day our hospital capacity is stretched and challenged,” Lee said.

Staffing shortages have exacerbated the situation, with an average of 10 to 20 people calling out sick daily, he said.

Lee said emergency department wait times at both PeaceHealth and across the nation have never been longer. Beds usually designated for the emergency department have to be used to hold admitted patients as they wait for other beds to become available. He said there have been numerous days in the past few weeks where 20 to 30 of PeaceHealth’s 55 emergency department beds were occupied by admitted patients.

“The capacity challenge on our hospitals and the health care system during this surge is real and the impact on the community is real,” Lee said. “This is to say nothing of the emotional impact on our frontline caregivers.”

Lee discussed therapeutic COVID-19 treatments, the most effective of which he said depended on the stage and severity of the infection. Antiviral and monoclonal antibody treatments have been proven to work as outpatient treatments for high-risk patients, though supplies of both are limited and federally administered. Proven treatments for hospitalized patients included steroids, immune modulators and an intravenous antiviral treatment.

Lee said PeaceHealth’s therapeutics committee includes specialists from multiple disciplines ranging from pulmonology to ethics.

“In short, we provide therapeutics in the hospital that have been studied and proven to be beneficial,” Lee said.

He said the hospital’s ethics code prevents staff from recommending unproven treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

Lee said a risk of heart arrhythmia has been a concern with hydroxychloroquine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has put out a statement about an increase in poison control center calls associated with the use of ivermectin.

“I would love to have more effective therapeutics to treat COVID-19,” but hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are unproven, he said.

He added using unproven treatments could delay effective treatments for those with COVID-19.

Although there are some therapeutics available, Lee said the best course of action medically is to get vaccinated.

“Even with variants such as delta in the late summer and now omicron, vaccinations, especially when boosted, still are remarkably effective at protecting us from serious illness, hospitalizations and death from COVID-19,” Lee said.

Lee said research in Washington shows vaccinated individuals who are 35 or older are seven to eight times less likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19 than unvaccinated people and are 13 times less likely to die from the disease.

“Imagine if I told you there was a therapy, an intervention that could decrease your chance of being hospitalized from a heart attack or colon cancer by sevenfold, and in fact had been proven to lower your chances of dying from heart attack or colon cancer by thirteenfold. What would you think of that intervention?” Lee asked.



Lee addressed talk of the pandemic becoming an endemic, something Gov. Jay Inslee later in the week said could be a possibility. Lee explained an endemic disease never completely goes away, but exists with lesser impacts to hospitalizations and death than in a pandemic phase.

“That future is possible, but will depend on two things,” Lee said, mentioning immunity from vaccines and natural infections as well as how the virus evolves.

“As crushing as this omicron surge has been, we got very lucky with omicron,” Lee said.

He said the current “super contagious” variant has less severe symptoms, but that may not be the case with other variants.

“It is just as likely for the next variant to be super contagious like omicron but deadly,” Lee said. “If that was the case, our world would look and feel very different, and our health care system will not be able to respond adequately.”

Vancouver Clinic Chief Medical Officer Alfred Seekamp said the pandemic’s relentlessness has greatly impacted health care staff.

“Some of the things that I’ve seen are utter exhaustion, just the sheer volume of patients, day after day, that people are seeing and caring for are simply overwhelming,” Seekamp said.

He also said he’s seen sadness among staff when they see sick individuals whose suffering could have been prevented.

“Lives have been lost too soon and before their full potential has been reached,” Seekamp said.

He also addressed the backlash health care workers face when they refuse to offer treatments that aren’t approved for treating the disease.

“All of us as physicians took a solemn oath to first do no harm and we took that oath seriously to protect our patients,” Seekamp said.

He said health care workers are scared they could bring COVID-19 to their homes, infecting spouses, children and other loved ones.

“Despite this, day after day, Clark County’s frontline physicians come to work to serve our community,” Seekamp said.

Vancouver Clinic Chief Executive Officer Mark Mantei said that although the health care system has different entities working in collaboration to combat the pandemic, the county board of health has at times been at odds with recommendations from medical professionals.

“In fact, many board of health meetings turned into unproductive debates that just fueled distrust toward the public health system, doctors and hospitals who have worked so hard to protect our community,” Mantei said.

He said it isn’t too late for the board to correct the situation if they decided to support recommendations on vaccinations, masking and proven infection control techniques.

Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center President John Hersen asked the board to “continue to remember that the words and actions taken by this body directly influence and impact the lives and wellbeing of our community.”

“For anyone that knows me well, you would know that I’m very much a nonpolitical person. To that end, my asks today have no political agenda, and are purely from the perspective of what I see and need to effectively run this hospital,” Hersen said.