- 35 -
accessHealthNews.net
December 2021
Volume 8 | Issue No. 52
This article was originally published in October 2021.
M
ore than 70 million Americans remain
unvaccinated against COVID-19 as
hospitals reach capacity and death tolls rise.
The Delta variant is slated to be more than
two times as infectious as previous strains, with
a viral load (a measure of the density of viral
particles in the body) of at least 1000 times
higher than other variants, according to some
reports. The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) described Delta as more
transmissible than the common cold and flu
– as well as the viruses that cause smallpox,
MERS, SARS, and Ebola – and called it as
contagious as chickenpox. This determination
comes from a CDC internal document
obtained by and reported on in a recent New
York Times article.
If that's not enough, the young and
unvaccinated are among the patients landing
in hospital ICUs – many of whom are in their
20s and 30s. According to a recent NPR article,
94,000 child cases of COVID-19 were reported
in early August, a 31% increase compared with
just one week earlier.
HOPE DEFERRED
These optics are far different than early 2020,
when most severely ill COVID-19 patients in ICU
beds were older adults. During the recent Get
Link'd 2021 Missouri Rural Health Association
Conference, Richard Logan, Pharm. D. –
ESPhA, talked about COVID-19 vaccine efforts
in Southeast Missouri – an area that is flagrantly
vaccine hesitant. Dr. Logan, along with his son
Tripp, own and operate three independent
pharmacies in Mississippi County, which sits on
the far Southeast corner of Missouri.
Charleston, Missouri is Dr. Logan's lifelong
home. It's also where his L&S Pharmacy is
headquartered, and is 20 miles from the closest
hospital. Charleston and neighboring East
Prairie are the only two cities in the county with
clinics, pharmacies, and the county health
department.
"Like most of rural Missouri, this area of the state
is highly agricultural. The demographics include
some of the poorest in the state," he said.
"We have the poorest folks, with the poorest
health literacy. We say we are 'the land of fried
chicken, fried catfish, and sweet tea.'"
When the pandemic first took shape in the U.S.,
Dr. Logan recalled how it hit both coasts as ICU
beds filled. "From the safety of rural Missouri, we
watched mobile hospitals begin to popup, and
we watched people get sicker and sicker and
sicker from COVID-19… We watched hospitals
on both coasts call in refrigerated trucks to act
as makeshift morgues."
The pandemic eventually made its way to
middle America, hitting St. Louis, Kansas City
and Springfield, Missouri. "And then we began
to see the trickle of patients at our local
hospital in Scott County and in Sikeston reach
capacity," Dr. Logan said. "We realized it was
here; it was among us, and we had to do
something."
"We had no plan. None
of us had ever been
through this before. We
knew as a pharmacy we
didn't have the personnel
to do it. We also knew
the health department,
which was absolutely
slammed at the time, did
not have the bandwidth
to provide vaccines to a
whole county."
