Like many hospitals, ChristianaCare sees record number of patients

WILMINGTON, Delaware (WPVI) -- Hospitals continue to face an unprecedented burden with the surge from COVID-19 on top of the usual seasonal increases in stroke, heart failure, pneumonia, and flu.

In Delaware, ChristianaCare is facing a record number of patients.

With nearly 80% of COVID patients unvaccinated, Wilmington Hospital's Chief Medical Officer Dr. LeRoi Hicks says it's a preventable crisis.

"The hospitals are full, nearly every day. When we have more patients than we have beds, we have to decide how we're going to move patients to allow new patients to get into the appropriate care setting," he said.

"We've been pulling out all the stops," says Hicks on efforts to deal with the range of other challenges, including staff shortages.

"We have called in nurses and physicians from other settings, to help make sure that we're maintaining safer ratios of patients to doctors and nurses," he said.

He said staffers have been tireless in educating patients on the vaccines, which he describes as the most studied vaccines in human history.

"We know more about these vaccines than about those (vaccines) which people get all the time!" Hicks said emphatically.

The state has one of the best vaccination rates, however, the numbers aren't going up enough to slow the lightning spread of both the delta and omicron variants.

Hicks fears that unless COVID numbers decline, hospitals and the community could hit a point of no return.