Tri-Cities hospitals treating younger patients for COVID. Vaccine demand growing

Tri-Cities hospitals are treating younger and younger patients for COVID-19, leading medical officials to issue more warnings to the community.

“We used to believe that only older patients with medical (conditions) were at risk. This seems to be no longer true,” said Dr. Robert Wenger, medical director of Prosser Memorial Health Emergency Department in a message to the community this week.

Prosser Memorial Hospital is admitting young, healthy patients in their 20s who need oxygen, and a few of them have required care in the intensive care unit, he said.

Benton Franklin Health District data shows the COVID pandemic in the Tri-Cities is back to levels seen last winter, despite the availability of a highly effective vaccine.

The number of vaccinations given has dropped substantially through the spring and summer, until an uptick last week.

The new case rate in the Tri-Cities has doubled in the last 12 days, and Franklin County has the highest new case rate in the state of Washington, said Dr. Person, health officer for Benton and Franklin counties, at a news media briefing Thursday.

On Wednesday, 68 people were hospitalized in Benton and Franklin counties for treatment of COVID-19, a number last seen in December.

Younger hospital patients

Kadlec Regional Medical Center, the largest Tri-Cities area hospital, also is treating younger patients for COVID-19, said Dr. Brian York, a Kadlec infectious disease specialist, on the latest Kadlec on Call podcast.

Doctors treating them say that most Kadlec COVID-19 patients say they wish they had been vaccinated but they didn’t think they would get so sick from the coronavirus, York said.

Only about a quarter of the hospital’s COVID-19 patients are older than 65.

Risk increases with age, with nearly one in three patients in their 80s or older with a confirmed case of COVID-19 dying of the disease during the pandemic, he said. That number has dropped as many seniors have chosen to be vaccinated.

The majority of Kadlec COVID-19 patients, 50% to 60%, are ages 35 to 65 and may have felt it was safe not be vaccinated, York said.

Some young healthy people have had serious issues with blood clots after being diagnosed with COVID-19, including having strokes or needing part of their intestines removed, York said.

Blood clots are a very rare side effect of COVID-19 vaccine, but York said that people are more likely to get a blood clot from the virus.

The nationwide increase in COVID-19 cases has some medications used to treat the disease in short supply, he said.

“There are times where the pharmacy gets a shipment of medication but in that shipment, there are fewer doses than they have ordered for and we have to find a way to prioritize who gets those meds,” York said.

“That’s not something that I ever thought I would see happen and that has become a reality here in our community,” he said. “... I can’t stress enough that people should be vaccinated.”

Cases in children

Wenger said there are also children with fever and upper respiratory symptoms coming into the Prosser emergency room and testing positive for COVID, but they have otherwise been doing well.

There is a risk for multisystem Inflamatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, who test positive for COVID-19, but the Prosser hospital has not seen an increase in those cases, Wenger said.

But more of those cases are possible two to three weeks after the COVID surge, he said.

Benton County has had no cases of multisystem inflamatory syndrome, Franklin County has had two cases and Yakima County has had six cases since the start of the pandemic.

It is a condition in children with COVID-19 in which different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes or gastrointestinal organs

Parents are advised to watch for symptoms such as fever or headache, abdominal pain with or without diarrhea, fatigue and respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath, according Dr. John McGuire, chief of the Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where many of the state’s MIS-C patients are sent for treatment.

In Benton and Franklin counties, two people younger than 20 have died of complications of COVID-19, plus one man in his 20s and two people in their 30s.

There have been 349 deaths total in all ages, the majority of them in the elderly before the vaccine was widely available.

COVID vaccinations

The Prosser hospital, like the Tri-Cities hospitals, is seeing some “breakthrough” cases in fully vaccinated people.

“These fully vaccinated patients, however, tend to have mild symptoms and are generally not requiring hospital level of care,” Wenger said.

Just 300 to 400 vaccinations are being given each day in the Tri-Cities in recent weeks, which was concerning to public health officials, said Heather Hill, infectious disease supervisor for the Benton Franklin Health District, speaking on the Kadlec on Call podcast, this week.

When demand was high early this spring, more than 1,000 vaccines a day were being given just at the drive-thru clinic at the Benton County Fairgrounds.

But this week more people have been asking for vaccinations, said Dr. Person.

Because two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine are needed weeks apart to be fully effective, that should translate to more people being fully vaccinated within six weeks.

Statewide 62% of residents eligible to be vaccinated — those 12 and older — are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

But in Benton County that drops to 48% and in Franklin County is 41%.

People eligible to receive the vaccine who have had at least one dose of the vaccine has increased to 54% in Benton County and 47% in Franklin County. Statewide 68% of those eligible have received at least an initial vaccination, not including some people who got the vaccine through federal programs, such as Veterans Affairs.

COVID-19 vaccine is free and widely available in the Tri-Cities, including at pharmacies, doctor’s offices and clinics. Go to vaccinelocator.doh.wa.gov for more information.

COVID delta variant

The increase in Tri-Cities cases is due to the more infectious delta variant of the coronavirus and the low vaccination rate.

About 93% of confirmed cases in Benton County currently are in unvaccinated people, and in Franklin County about 95% of cases are in unvaccinated people, Dr. Person said.

She is hopeful that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could give full approval for COVID vaccines as soon as Labor Day, she said, citing reporting in the New York Times.

Some people have said they are reluctant to be vaccinated while COVID vaccines have only emergency authorization, even though doctors say the vaccine is safe, effective and saving many lives.

Dr. Person also praised the decision of Tyson Foods this week to require workers at its Wallula beef plant to be vaccinated. The majority of its employees live in the Tri-Cities.

Six weeks ago the delta variant accounted for 13% of the cases in the state, based on genotyping of a sampling of the test samples that for positive for the coronavirus.

That increased to about 85% of genotyped test samples as of two weeks ago, the most recent results compiled, York said.

Washington state Department of Health officials have projected that the percentage of cases caused by the delta virus now is more than 90%.

COVID case rates

The COVID-19 new case rates for both Benton and Franklin counties are now higher than 500.

In May, Benton and Franklin counties were working to get their case rates below 200, a previous target set by Gov. Jay Inslee for reopening businesses during the pandemic. Businesses are not open with limited restrictions.

On Thursday, the latest case rate reported for Benton County was 535 new cases per 100,000 in two weeks. In Franklin County it was 568.

New cases are increasing most quickly in people ages 20 to 29 in the Tri-Cities area, but there also is an increase in new cases in children 14 and younger, Dr. Person said.

Demand for testing for COVID-19 has increased, with as many as 600 tests done in a day at the free, drive-thru testing site at Columbia Basin College in Pasco.

Nearly one in four of the tests are positive, Dr. Person said.

The testing site is open 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays through Tuesdays at 3110 W. Argent Road, Pasco. Plans are being considered to return to testing seven days a week at the site.

This story was originally published August 5, 2021 at 12:59 PM.