Intensive care units in hospitals around the state beyond capacity

Salt Lake City, Utah —ICU units in hospitals around the state are over capacity, causing them to turn away patients with life-threatening health issues.

According to Dr. Todd Vento, an Intermountain Healthcare Infectious Diseases Physician, health professionals have conversations multiple times a day about where to send patients because of ICU capacity deficits.

Dr.Vento explained that with the Delta variant children are now much more susceptible to contracting COVID-19.

“What we’ve also seen is in our facilities is a lowering of the overall age of the ICU cases in particular . . . so that the numbers are about 20 years less in an age when compared to this time last year,” he explained.

Intermountain also stresses the need to have a mask barrier to prevent the Delta variant from spreading.

“It’s all about numbers. If you have a million more cases for example, then you are going to have a proportionate increase in the number or percentage of severe cases and that’s really what we’re dealing with in regards to the pediatric population,” added Dr. Vento.

According to Intermountain, they were 360% higher in their cases after Labor Day this year than last year, and last year the number of cases went all the way up to 5,000.

They also reported that last year had record low numbers of respiratory virus infections and influenza, as the transmission of these illnesses was reduced.

According to Intermountain, the virus is much more aggressive in terms of how much virus a person receives–the “load” after being infected.