The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients at Willis-Knighton Health System has fallen below 100 after two months of increased hospitalizations resulting from the Delta variant and fourth surge of the pandemic.
On Tuesday, Sept. 1, the total number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients fell below 100 for the first time since Aug. 7, with 96 patients reported as inpatients. The health system began seeing the Delta variant wave in the first part of July when hospitalizations skyrocketed from eight COVID patients on July 7 to 72 two weeks later on July 26 for an 888% increase.
COVID-19 emergency department and WK Quick Care visits are also down from a high of 25% of all visits to 10%.
“By the end of May it seemed as if we had turned the corner on the more than yearlong pandemic, only to be hit with the deadly Delta variant wave,” says Brian Crawford, senior executive vice president and chief administrative officer at Willis-Knighton. “As our incredibly resilient but exhausted staff of healthcare professionals is weathering yet another storm of the COVID-19 virus, we are hopefully optimistic with the decrease in patient volumes over the past week, that we continue to see a downward trend and the end of this latest wave is near. We continue to stress the importance of vaccine being the key to elimination of the virus or its more serious effects. We saw and continue to see during the Delta wave 90% of our COVID-19 patients were unvaccinated.”
