LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas — While COVID-19 hospitalizations in Arkansas have gone down over the past two weeks it's clear that ventilator usage is still on the rise.
On Tuesday, Arkansas reached a new high for ventilators with almost 400 of the machines used across the state.
"The percentage of those patients that are sicker and requiring ventilators has risen significantly. It's really more than doubled in the past three weeks," said CHI St. Vincent Chief Medical Officer Gerry Jones.
The delta variant seems to cause more severe cases than the older COVID-19 variants. UAMS noticed the difference immediately.
"We were down to about eight to 10 ventilators in house, saw that very early on, because the surge came in very quickly," said UAMS Respiratory Director Jeff Halbert.
Soon after, Halbert made sure to order plenty of ventilators for the hospital. Now, they have about 80 machines, and less than half are in use.
When a patient get sick enough to need a ventilator they often stay in the hospital for weeks. When someone gets sick enough to need a ventilator, the survival rate is discouraging.
"What further complicates it now is how many young people we have on the ventilator," said Dr. Amanda Novack, Baptist Health Medical Director of Infection Prevention. "And so they can actually survive on the ventilator for a long time, but decline for weeks instead of days."
95% of the patients at Baptist Health using a ventilator are not fully vaccinated.
Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, Arkansas' Chief Medical Officer says statistics show half of people who go on the ventilator do not survive.
Hospitals have continued to add more bed space and ventilators hoping to fulfill the need.