OKLAHOMA CITY: The patient alarms ping constantly in the COVID-19 ward at a hospital in Oklahoma City, signaling to pulmonologist Dr. Syed Naqvi and the rest of the ICU team that yet another person needs help.
The sheer volume is exhausting, Naqvi said, but the emotional toll is even more draining, given that each time he puts a patient on a ventilator he knows there is little chance that person will recover.
“The disease is real. Unfortunately, the misery is real. We have and still see patients die every day,” Naqvi said from an intensive care unit set aside for COVID-19 patients at the SSM Health St. Anthony Hospital.
At the same time as coronavirus vaccinations are being rolled out across the United States, the post-holiday spike in cases appears to be easing.
In Oklahoma, the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized has fallen 34% in the last two weeks, with 1,375 admitted as of Thursday, according to a Reuters tally.
The state’s rate of infected people to population of…