Maryland hospital beds for kids are filling up with COVID
and other virus cases. When school starts, doctors say it could get worse.
By HALLIE MILLER
BALTIMORE SUN |
AUG 18, 2021 AT 3:07 PM
Maryland hospital beds designated for children are filling up, with COVID-19
and other respiratory viruses largely to blame. As schools reopen with mask requirements that vary from county to county, the situation could escalate and cripple the health care system, hospital officials and medical professionals say.
Maryland has not experienced the devastation of some Southern states, and the number of COVID-19 cases among children has not surpassed the winter and spring peaks. But with cases of respiratory syncytial virus, called RSV, on the rise, and with more children getting inpatient treatment for COVID-19 than during previous waves of the coronavirus pandemic, Maryland officials said the capacity to care for kids could be tested this fall and winter.
"We are in a very significant planning stage for increased hospitalization," said Dr. Jason W. Custer, director of the pediatric intensive care unit at the University of Maryland Children's Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics at the university's medical school. "With the delta variant, and other viruses, and kids going back to school — coupled together, that does get our attention."
About 2% of the COVID-19 patients hospitalized over the last two months in Maryland have been children younger than 19, said Dr. Ted Delbridge, executive director of the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems, which coordinates and oversees emergency care in the state. That's twice the volume of pediatric patients that needed hospital care at the beginning of the public health crisis, he said.
Delbridge said
it's unusual to see RSV detected in kids this early in the year. Its severity was largely dulled in 2020 and early 2021 with many schools operating remotely, families staying isolated and people generally covering their faces outside their homes.
There are 271 staffed beds for pediatric care in the state, Delbridge said, and as of Friday, 204 were occupied. Among the 61 beds available in Baltimore pediatric intensive care units, 52 were occupied.
Those figures do not include Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., which treats patients from Maryland. Dr. Sarah Ash Combs, a pediatric emergency medicine specialist and the hospital's emergency department director of outreach, said the facility had 300 cases of the disease caused by RSV in July, up from zero last winter. Also, COVID-19 cases have crept back up, she said.
"It feels like COVID is back, with the caveat that it never really went away," Combs said.
Maryland health care providers said they have the beds and the space to expand, should the situation worsen.
But they may not have the staff — especially those with expertise in pediatrics — to support a surge.
Nationally, a
shortage of health care workers, particularly nurses, has made caring for COVID-19 patients especially challenging. Some have left the field altogether, while others have left the state for higher-paying, short-term jobs elsewhere.
There is no overall shortage of medical professionals, said Bob Atlas, president and CEO of the Maryland Hospital Association, last week. But there are "mismatches," with some hospitals having too few workers.
The health care system generally has more resources available for the adult population than for children, Custer said, which could pose a challenge in the weeks and months to come.
Medical experts said it's too early to say for sure that the new COVID-19 delta variant causes more serious infections in young people than previous strains. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers it more contagious and more adept at breaking through the protective shields afforded by vaccinations.
So long as pockets of Maryland and the U.S. remain unvaccinated, the coronavirus can continue to mutate and cause damage and disruption among those who have not been immunized and their families, said Dr. Gabe Kelen, director of the emergency medicine department at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.