Elective - HeadlinesCurator

Here we go again.

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order Friday to postpone elective hospital surgeries — something that hasn’t been done since the worst of the initial coronavirus outbreak last year.

Hochul said she made the move to deal with staffing shortages and boost bed capacity amid an anticipated “spike” in new cases and the emergence of the new Omicron variant in South Africa. The strain is named after a letter of the Greek alphabet.

“We’ve taken extraordinary action to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and combat this pandemic. However, we continue to see warning signs of spikes this upcoming winter, and while the new Omicron variant has yet to be detected in New York State, it’s coming,” Hochul said.

“In preparation, I am announcing urgent steps today to expand hospital capacity and help ensure our hospital systems can tackle any challenges posed by the pandemic as we head into the winter months. The vaccine remains one of our greatest weapons in fighting the pandemic, and I encourage every New Yorker to get vaccinated, and get the booster if you’re fully vaccinated.”

The governor decided to implement these measures in response to the emergence of the new COVID variant Omicron found in South Africa.

The edict curbing non-essential surgeries will kick in for hospitals with a limited capacity — defined as at or below 10 percent of available staffed bed capacity.

The new protocols will take effect on Friday, Dec. 3, and will be re-evaluated based on the latest COVID-19 data on Jan. 15.

The executive order will also enable the state to more quickly any critical supplies to combat the pandemic, she said.

Gov. Kathy Hochul says her executive order will increase New York’s ability to fight a projected rise in COVID cases.

Hochul’s action comes as her upstate neighbors have been ignoring her pleas to get vaccinated.

The upstate regions have both the highest COVID-19 positivity rates and stubbornly lowest vaccination rates compared to New York City, state Department of Health Department data reveal.

While advising residents to continue mask-wearing indoors and to practice good hygiene and get tested for COVID-19, she added, “The vaccine also remains one of our greatest weapons in fighting the pandemic, and this news further emphasizes the need for each of us to get vaccinated and get the booster if you’re fully vaccinated.”

Upstate New York has the highest COVID rates but the lowest vaccination rates in the state.

But the COVID-19 positivity rate has been soaring upstate entering the Thanksgiving weekend while remaining low in New York City.

“The virus is still lurking among us,” said Ayman El-Mohandes, dean of the CUNY School of Public Health. “The low vaccination rates and high positivity rate upstate is very concerning.”

The highest COVID-19 positivity rate in the state was in her Hochul’s backyard — the Buffalo/Western New York region, where 9.67 percent of residents test positive as of Thursday. Erie County has re-imposed a mask mandate indoors to address the flare-up in cases.

There are counties in upstate New York where fewer than 70% of eligible people have been vaccinated.

The three-days average COVID positivity rate by other regions: Finger Lakes, 8.85 percent; North Country/Adirondacks: 7.82 percent; Mohawk Valley, 7.7 percent; Syracuse/Central NY, 6.46 percent; and the Albany/Capital Region, 6.96 percent.

Meanwhile the positivity rate in New York City — where there are strong mandates for government workers to get vaccinated — the positivity rate 1.65 percent. That’s less than half the state’s 3.84 percent average.

Elsewhere, the positivity rate is 3.14 percent in the mid-Hudson Valley and 4.40 percent in Long Island, the analysis shows.

Meanwhile, the state DOH’s vaccine tracker finds there are 18 counties upstate where fewer than 70 percent of adults have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

Only 52.9 percent of adults ages 18 and over in Allegheny County in the Southern Tier region have been vaccinated, followed by Tioga County in the North Country, where just 57.5 percent residents got at least one jab.

The statewide adult vaccination rate average is 90 percent.

The vaccination rate in Eric County, which includes Hochul’s native Buffalo is 80 percent — meaning one in five adults has not gotten a shot. In neighboring Niagara County, one in four adults are unvaccinated.

By comparison in New York City, 97 percent of Queens adults and 94 percent of Manhattan adults are vaccinated, followed by the Bronx, Staten Island and Brooklyn with vaccination rates of 86.4 percent, 84.4 percent and 82.9 percent respectively.

A recent CUNY School of Public Health survey of five U.S. metro areas found that households with lower incomes and expressing more conservative ideology were strongly linked to vaccine resistance. El-Mohandes said opposition to vaccination could be a contributing factor to the lower vaccination and higher coronavirus positivity rates upstate.

“Leaders of all political stripes should encourage their communities to get vaccinated. The more we are protected, the less likely we will see variants,” El-Mohandes said.

“We have to turn the tide on vaccine resistance.”

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Because of her condition, she chokes easily and has a hard time breathing. “I just cry all the time because of my situation,” she said.

Compounding the physical discomfort is her frustration that so many people in her state won’t get vaccinated against Covid, and they are getting sick and taking up hospital beds.

Only 66 percent of adults in Georgia have received at least one vaccine dose, compared with 77 percent of all adults in the United States who have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the latest data from federal and state health officials.

“They are punishing people like me,” Ms. Strong said.

In some areas, doctors are explicitly rationing care. On Thursday, Idaho state officials expanded “crisis standards of care” across the state, a standard that had been limited to the northern part of the state earlier in the month. “We don’t have enough resources to adequately treat the patients in our hospitals, whether you are there for Covid-19 or a heart attack or because of a car accident,” Dave Jeppesen, the director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, said in a statement.

With precious few available intensive-care beds, Idaho hospitals had largely stopped providing hernia surgeries or hip replacements before the new order. Now they are postponing cancer and heart surgeries, too, said Brian Whitlock, the chief executive of the Idaho Hospital Association. The hospitals there “have been doing their level best,” he said.

In Alaska, the state’s largest hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, has also begun rationing care as patients wait for hours to get to the emergency room and doctors scramble to find beds. “While we are doing our utmost, we are no longer able to provide the standard of care to each and every patient who needs our help,” said the hospital’s medical staff in a letter to the community in mid-September.

When the pandemic first slammed hospitals last year, many institutions found no alternative to postponing nonessential procedures. “We weren’t sure what we were really going to face,” said Dr. Matthias Merkel, senior associate chief medical officer for capacity management and patient flow at Oregon Health & Science University, the state’s academic medical center in Portland. “We pre-emptively stopped elective surgeries and emptied out the hospitals.”

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