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 "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."
Orange County, in southern California, has one of the highest
COVID-19 hospitalization rates in the state, where cases peaked
about two weeks ago.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Emergency room patient numbers have plateaued at an "unsustainably
high level," said Keany, leaving people waiting on gurneys in
corridors.
"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."
Around eight of 10 patients on ventilators in intensive care are
unvaccinated, according to Dr. Robert Goldberg, a critical care
specialist at Providence Mission.
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. Cases
and hospitalizations continue to fall rapidly.
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.
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 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.
"Doctor, what do you think about my decision?"
the man asked as he lay face down to help him
breathe.
"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.
The patient's family asked that none of their
names be used.
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.
"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.
One constant is the high survival rate of
vaccinated patients, added Goldberg, a pulmonary
critical care doctor.
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.
"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.
Although Orange County was long a Republican
bastion, Democrats now hold five of the seven
U.S. congressional districts there.
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.
Sitting on the ER frontline, Scott said she is
tired but knows patients are even more
exhausted.
 "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.
(Reporting by Shannon Stapleton in Mission
Viejo, California; Writing by Andrew Hay;
Editing by Donna Bryson and Leslie Adler)
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