GREENSBORO, N.C. — The number of COVID-19 patients keeps growing in our hospitals. Numbers are getting so high it's impacting how and all patients get treated.
"It's readily apparent that we are having a crisis,” said Dr. John Mann with Novant Health.
Healthcare professionals from Cone Health, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist and Novant Health came together to urge folks who haven't gotten the vaccine to get it now.
“Help us out! We the healthcare workers need a break,” said Dr. Christopher Ohl with Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist.
Physicians from Triad hospitals say their team members and providers are exhausted from fighting the pandemic.
“We would like to get a little bit of breathing room in our hospitals and would like to see things slow down a little bit,” said Dr. Ohl.
More than 90% of COVID-19 patients in the hospital are unvaccinated. They say more are younger and many are from communities with low vaccination rates.
“If you are exposed and you are unvaccinated, you have about 2.2 times the risk of getting hospitalized,” said Dr. Ohl.
They say staffing is critical. The more health systems take on COVID-19 patients, the more they have to transfer other units into COVID units.
"Some of those units need a certain level of specialization among nursing staff and physicians and that becomes the critical piece,” said Dr. Cynthia Snider with Cone Health.
For people who are not experiencing serious symptoms, they ask for them to not go to the Emergency Department for routine COVID-19 testing.
“If you have a child who needs to get back to school and you want to get them tested because they have a cold or allergies, I would go for one of the drive-in sites or one of the out of emergency department sites,” said Dr. Ohl.
The health systems say they realize that people have strong feelings about vaccines, but they want folks to do what's necessary to protect those around them.
.