By Erika Edwards -
NBC News
There are only three patients with COVID-19 currently at Sandra Atlas Bass Heart Hospital on Long Island, New York.
It's a stark contrast to how the hospital was doing during the peak of the pandemic in the United States, with up to 600 coronavirus patients hospitalized.
And Dr. Hugh Cassiere, director of critical services at the hospital, notes that the three current patients, all in the intensive care unit, have one thing in common: They
are not vaccinated.
It's a trend that seems to be happening in various hospitals across the United States.
"No one seriously ill who has already been vaccinated has arrived," said Josh Denson, a doctor of pulmonary medicine and intensive care at Tulane University Medical Center in New Orleans.
The same was pointed out by Ken Lyn-Kew, pulmonologist in the critical care department at National Jewish Health in Denver: "None of our patients in the ICU had been vaccinated."
[Still have questions about the COVID-19 vaccine? A doctor answers the most controversial questions]
Unimmunized minors are also at higher risk for serious illness if they catch COVID-19.
"In our local hospitals, the children who are getting sick are the ones who have not yet received the vaccine," said pediatrician Natasha Burgert, spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Thanks to the coronavirus vaccination campaign, the number of hospitalized patients has plummeted.
The
average of 125,000 people in January had dropped to 15,000
by the week of June 7, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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"The vaccines are working, and very well," Denson said.
"It is ridiculous at this point that there are those who do not want to take advantage of that," he added.
Only half of American adults, 53%, have been fully immunized (received all necessary doses of coronavirus vaccines).
[Pfizer is in a race against time to vaccinate children, who now account for nearly 20% of new COVID-19 cases]
Intensive care doctors emphasize that it is necessary to complete the vaccination series, and not just stick with one dose if it is a two-shot vaccine, such as Pfizer or Moderna.
Todd Rice, director of the intensive care unit at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said that hospital had admitted at least 32 patients who had only been partially immunized.
That is, with only one dose or that they had been vaccinated just days before hospitalization;
it takes longer for the body to develop protective antibodies.
However, Rice said that the vast majority of patients who have come to that center since the vaccination campaign began to show progress were people not yet immunized.
Infections in individuals who have been fully vaccinated are possible but extremely rare.
When they do happen, it is highly unlikely that that person needs to be hospitalized, preliminary results of a study published on the MedRxiv site show.
[Beer and Free Child Care: Biden Announces New Incentives to Get Vaccinated Against COVID-19]
Alex Olvera, 15, receives the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19 from nurse Rickeyva Foster, at a school in Los Angeles, California, on May 17, 2021 Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The only cases that Rice remembers of someone who required hospitalization for an infection after receiving the vaccine are of people with immunosuppression who, because of those conditions, did not respond as well to vaccines with enough antibodies.
"One of those patients had cancer and the other was taking immunosuppressants for a rheumatological disease," he said.
The CDC recommends that everyone get vaccinated, even if they already had coronavirus within the last year.
However, Lyn-Kew of the hospital in Denver said some of the patients who were hospitalized without being vaccinated chose not to get the vaccine because they believed they were protected by a previous illness.
Even when they had not even confirmed that that disease had been COVID-19.
“They thought they had coronavirus, but they didn't.
And
they get used to, 'Oh, I don't need to get vaccinated
then,' ”Lyn-Kew said.
The doctor warned: "That is a deadly mistake."
