COVID surge puts renewed pressure on Duluth-area hospitals

DULUTH – Local hospitals are nearing capacity as COVID-19 continues to surge in northeastern Minnesota, and health officials on Tuesday again found themselves pleading with residents to get the COVID-19 vaccine and adhere to mask recommendations.

"This is a really big deal," said Dr. Andrea Boehland, an emergency department physician at Essentia Health in Duluth. "Our situation today is quite serious."

Just 7% of staffed ICU beds and 13% of non-ICU beds in the region were available at the beginning of the week, according to the state Department of Health. That's due not only to the increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations but from an expected rise in summertime injuries and a spike in sickness resulting from people not seeking preventive and routine care, Boehland said.

Capacity is even tighter in the Twin Cities, and some metro-area patients have been sent to hospitals in northeastern Minnesota as a result.

On Tuesday, 53 patients were hospitalized with serious COVID-19 cases across Essentia's facilities from Fargo to Superior, Wis. — an increase of 10 from the day before.

"None of us want to be in this situation, but here we are and here we go again," said Amy Westbrook, St. Louis County's director of public health.

Last week St. Louis County reported 273 new COVID-19 cases, an increase of 52% from the week before. Federal guidelines consider that a high rate of transmission, and they say masks should be worn indoors regardless of vaccination status.

The recent spread is almost entirely attributable to the highly contagious delta variant and is affecting mainly unvaccinated people, though some rare breakthrough cases have been seen in fully vaccinated residents.

The county, home to about 200,000 residents, has reported that more than 118,000 people have received at least one dose of the vaccine, or 69% of the population 16 and older.

"It's not enough," Westbrook said. "The areas [of the county] with lower vaccination rates are seeing higher incidences of new cases.

"This is for the health of our kids too young to be vaccinated, our neighbors who may be experiencing waning immunity."

Itasca County also has seen a marked increase in infections and hospitalizations in August after recording just a handful of new COVID-19 cases in July; about 60% of the population 16 and older in that county has received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Dr. Harmony Tyner, an infectious disease specialist at St. Luke's in Duluth, said vaccine reluctance is "a huge problem that is largely about [dis]information, but it's also an emotional problem."

"Vaccination is the number one best tool we have," she said. "But please be kind to each other. We're all in this together, whether we're vaccinated or not."

Brooks Johnson • 218-491-6496