Springfield COVID-19 cases rise among young, unvaccinated patients
Robin Trotman, the top infectious disease specialist at Cox Hospital in Springfield, said a shift in the area’s COVID-19 cases is causing him to lose sleep at night.
At this time last year, patients hospitalized with COVID-19 tended to be older with underlying health conditions.
Now, Trotman said, Springfield-area hospitals are seeing more young, previously healthy people who are coming down with serious COVID-19-related pneumonia.
“We have some ICUs that are starting to fill up, and they look very different than they did a year ago,” Trotman said. “These patients are younger, previously healthy. They’re not terribly overweight or diabetic or in their 90s.
“And I don’t have a good explanation for what made these particular people get so sick.”
The number of patients hospitalized because of COVID-19 across CoxHealth’s system jumped to 48 on Tuesday after being in the teens in recent weeks.
One thing the hospitalized patients at Cox have in common, Trotman said, is they are not vaccinated.
Trotman said the virus has gotten stronger with more variants popping up, but the available COVID-19 vaccines have proven to be safe and effective over months of use.
Still, southwest Missouri is lagging behind the national average for vaccinations, and Trotman said the choice has become pretty simple: get vaccinated or you will eventually get infected with COVID-19.
And Trotman said he can no longer reassure young, healthy people that they won’t become seriously ill from COVID-19.
“Every day for the last two weeks I’ve been surprised by the severity of the illness in these young, healthy people,” Trotman said. “Going forward, I think we don’t have an option. You’re a sitting duck. If you’re not immune to this virus, you are going to get sick, with 100 percent certainty. Or you can take this vaccine.”
Mercy Hospital also reported an uptick with 45 COVID-positive patients Tuesday in the Springfield hospital, three at Mercy Hospital Aurora and four at Mercy’s facility in Lebanon.
The recent uptick in Springfield’s COVID-19 cases comes on the heels of city leadership lifting the mask mandate.
Asked if the city moved too quickly to repeal the mask mandate, CoxHealth President and CEO Steve Edwards said he did not want to be critical of city leaders who had to strike a difficult balance between keeping people safe while also working toward a return to normalcy.
Ultimately, Edwards said the most important thing is to get more shots in arms.
“If we’re all vaccinated, we really don’t need masks,” Edwards said.
Edwards said healthcare professionals have been battling against misinformation and politicization when it comes to the vaccine, and he encouraged anyone with questions to reach out to the local hospitals or the health department.
Katie Towns, acting director of health for the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, also held a news conference encouraging people to get vaccinated, saying there were 142 new COVID-19 cases reported Tuesday in Greene County.
Towns said the more aggressive Delta variant (also known as the India variant) of COVID-19 has made its way to Springfield and may have something to do with the recent spike in cases.
“The most effective tool against those variants, all of them, is vaccine,” Towns said.
Towns said that even individuals who have previously gotten COVID-19 and built up an immunity should get the vaccine because public health experts are not sure how long the natural immunity lasts.
For more information and how to go about getting a COVID-19 vaccine in Springfield, visit Vaccine417.com.
