<br>By Shannon Stapleton<br> <br>MISSION VIEJO, Calif. In case you loved this short article and you would want to receive details concerning รูเล็ตออนไลน์ please visit the site. , Jan 31 (Reuters) – Alexandria Scott rests her head in her hand at the emergency room reception and hopes the worst is over after the COVID-19 Omicron variant swept into her Orange County, California, hospital.<br> <br> »It’s been crazy, » said the 26-year-old technician as patients lie on seats a few feet away at Providence Mission Hospital Mission Viejo, waiting for beds.
« We have had literally 24-hour wait times, 18-hour wait times, and it’s just people after people coming in. »<br> <br>Orange County, in southern California, has one of the highest COVID-19 hospitalization rates in the state, where cases peaked about two weeks ago.<br> <br>As in hospitals across the country, Omicron hit Providence Mission’s emergency room hardest with record numbers of patients.

Fewer intensive-care beds are needed for this less-deadly variant, but it is still inflicting major lung damage on the unvaccinated, doctors say.<br> <br>The 504-bed acute care hospital triaged patients into modern surge wards and intensive care units that have been able to expand and contract to COVID-19 waves like few others in the country.<br> <br>Staff, depleted by sickness and resignations, have taken a beating.
Many say they have caught COVID-19 twice, have had little time to process hundreds of coronavirus deaths, and face tense moments with patients and families in a county known for its political conservatism, according to about a dozen doctors and nurses who spoke to Reuters.<br> <br> »We responded, but it was overwhelming, it nearly broke all of us, » said emergency room doctor Jim Keany.

Many of his colleagues, Keany said, are exhausted, see no end to the pandemic and have quit.<br> <br>Emergency room patient numbers have plateaued at an « unsustainably high level, » said Keany, leaving people waiting on gurneys in corridors.<br> <br> »I think a lot of us just feel numb, » said Amy Langdale, an emergency room trauma nurse.
« There’s just an underlying depression, there’s definitely a very high burnout. »<br> <br>Around eight of 10 patients on ventilators in intensive care are unvaccinated, according to Dr. Robert Goldberg, a critical care specialist at Providence Mission.<br> <br>Nationally, deaths, which tend to lag infection rates, have been rising and have averaged over 2,500 a day, double the level seen before the Omicron surge, but below the peak of 3,300 a day during the Delta surge in January 2021, according to a Reuters tally website Cases and hospitalizations continue to fall rapidly.<br> <br>Some patients in the Providence Mission intensive care unit spend the last weeks of their lives on ventilators that pump oxygen in and out of coronavirus-damaged lungs.<br> <br>A middle-aged man in the unit struggling to breathe decided to go on a ventilator.

His children leaned over him, his son with an arm on his bare back, his daughter with a hand on his head, their heads pressed to his side, praying for him to get better.<br> <br> »Doctor, what do you think about my decision? » the man asked as he lay face down to help him breathe.<br> <br> »I think that if you want to fight as hard as you can, you made the right decision, » said Dr.
Tauseef Qureshi as he unplugged the patient’s mobile phone to make room for the ventilator.<br> <br>The patient’s family asked that none of their names be used.<br> <br>Outside, a picture in a staff area showed nurses who volunteered to work in the unit back in early 2020 when many medics were scared to set foot there.

Danielle Shaw is among them.<br> <br> »I call it Russian roulette. You could have no risk factors and still get super sick, » Shaw said of the coronavirus she has seen kill young, old and healthy people.<br> <br>One constant is the high survival rate of vaccinated patients, added Goldberg, a pulmonary critical care doctor.<br> <br>He finds it difficult working with « politicized » families who accuse his team of doing little for patients when he says everything is being done to keep them alive.<br> <br> »We are seeing our colleagues go down, becoming sick, and then to have families that are confrontational is very frustrating and difficult – and emotionally trying, » Goldberg said.<br> <br>Although Orange County was long a Republican bastion, Democrats now hold five of the seven U.S.

congressional districts there.<br> <br>For now, Keany, the emergency room doctor, is thankful that only 25% of emergency room patients have COVID-19, compared with well over half a few weeks ago.<br> <br>Sitting on the ER frontline, Scott said she is tired but knows patients are even more exhausted.<br> <br> »I choose to be here, I love my job, » said the « tech, » who has known nothing but COVID-19 since she began work at Providence Mission two years ago.<br> <br>(Reporting by Shannon Stapleton in Mission Viejo, California; Writing by Andrew Hay; Editing by Donna Bryson and Leslie Adler)<br>