NEW HAVEN, Conn — According to a study, conducted by Connecticut doctors, hospitals in the northeast, which were hit the hardest during the early stages of the pandemic, contributed to the overall Covid death toll.
A study published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, co-authored by several Yale doctors, says one of the primary reasons for thousands of COVID deaths is the lack of hospital resources, including ICU beds.
The study says early in the pandemic, Hartford was among those that struggled with enough resources.
"On that list of the top 10 communities was in fact Hartford, alongside places like the Bronx in New York, Manhattan, Camden New Jersey, Detroit Michigan, Philadelphia," said Dr. Arjun Venkatesh, Associate Professor of Medicine for Yale School of Medicine.
He is one of the study's co-authors, who says the picture would have been different if more hospitals had more than average resources.
"That would’ve prevented, we think, 15,000 deaths that happened from Covid in just April alone," he said.
And, he adds, it's a good thing many subscribed to flattening the curve, which essentially resulted in spreading out the infections.
"Had we not done that it wouldn’t have been 15,000 in excess deaths in April. It would’ve been 10 times that number potentially."
But Yale-New Haven Hospital faired quite well early on.
"With what we did at Yale, for example, was quickly changing units that would’ve been previously used for a patient say getting an elective surgery say knee replacement and turn it into a unit for Covid beds," Venkatesh said.
And they took nurses that perhaps had not worked in an ICU in quite some time and re-trained them.
"We took people that would have otherwise been taking care of patients at sort of outpatient centers and brought them back to the hospital," he said.
Redeploying the workforce and beds the keys to success.