SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) – Utah is dealing with another devastating blow of COVID-19. State health officials tell us there are more than 2,200 new cases and 15 deaths from coronavirus over the weekend.
“Seeing those numbers go up like that, it’s kind of a gut punch,” says Registered Nurse Sean Talley. “If [nurses] didn’t care about any of it and that it was just the job, they wouldn’t have as much emotion behind it, but they do, and it’s taxing because they generally care about the public and their patients.”
Talley is the Clinical Operations Nursing Director for Intermountain Healthcare. He’s been on the COVID front lines since the beginning of the pandemic, and he says his floors are getting full again.
“It’s not like it was when it first started,” says Talley.
He describes what’s going on now as running from one marathon to the next without a break. Talley’s hospital hallways, all lined with PPE and life-saving machinery.
“I think coming to work and seeing all of that out there, umm, it is tough to see because they know what is coming because they have been through it once,” he adds.
The Utah Department of Health states 367 people are in the hospital fighting the disease.
Officials say, 120 of those patients are in Salt Lake County where Talley works.
“We are having to reshuffle patients around and trying to accommodate everyone that we can while we are here,” he says. “I think it is going to ramp up and we some steep amount of cases, but I think it will come back down, but we need to do our part to get there.”
For healthcare workers, that means having those ages 12 and up to get one of the three COVID vaccines available.
Talley says, “It’s tough to see someone that is under and not doing well, and afflicted with this – especially when a vaccine is going to help them.”
