A man is lifted from the bed with a hoist and turned. He can no longer do that himself. The patient is in the intensive care unit of the Maine Medical Center in the northeast of the country with a severe Covid disease. The clinic is one of many in the United States that is sounding the alarm: It is overcrowded with young corona patients.
In a video that the hospital published on YouTube, nurses give an insight into their exhausting everyday life. You are completely at the end. Nurse Kimberly Matheson says, “We come to work every day – and we know it’s going to be a tough day.”
Now healthy, young people are seriously ill with Covid
The difference to the start of the pandemic in the US? The seriously ill corona patients are no longer older people with a previous illness, but rather healthy middle-aged people. Many are not vaccinated.
“Today I take care of a man in his mid-forties. An unvaccinated man who was otherwise perfectly healthy – and is now dying of Covid, ”says nurse Chani Marcoux.
The number of Covid cases in the USA has been increasing for weeks. There are currently more than 160,000 new infections per week. The US health authority CDC has been warning of hundreds of thousands of new infections per day since August. A situation that, according to the authorities, can be brought under control by keeping distances, the mask requirement and above all with the vaccination.
“More people packed in body bags than ever before”
The situation is particularly tough for those carers who have already experienced several corona waves. Matheson cannot understand that there are still people who deny Covid.
“I wish I could bring them here and show what we’re doing here. I have often met unvaccinated patients who are literally unable to breathe – and you can see the fear in their eyes, ”she says.
And the nurse Britney Munier has to swallow hard when she says: “I’ve definitely packed so many people in body bags this year that it’s enough for more than a lifetime”. (gin)