Hospital workers celebrate zero Covid patients as a result of vaccinations

Hospital workers celebrate zero Covid patients after more than a year fighting on front lines Seeing fewer Covid-19 patients has been a weight off the shoulders of health care workers, who credit the success of vaccines. NBC News

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With nearly 150 million Americans fully vaccinated, some hospitals are now reporting zero Covid-19 patients for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, marking a milestone in the fight against Covid-19 and lifting a weight off the shoulders of health care professionals who have dealt with the virus on the front lines.

The number of new Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are down dramatically since the height of the pandemic earlier this year. The current seven-day average of new Covid-19 hospitalizations is 1,879, down from a peak of more than 16,000 in January. The United States is currently reporting a seven-day average of about 12,000 new Covid-19 cases per day, down from a peak of about 250,000 a day in January.

The University of North Carolina Health system similarly saw zero patients in its Covid-19 unit for a 36-hour period, and as of last Thursday, June 17, the unit had just two Covid-19 patients in its care, said Subhashini Sellers, an assistant professor of medicine at UNC who also practices at UNC Health.

Sellers said she feels cautiously optimistic as the number of Covid-19 patients dwindles — she is still anxious about potential surges of new patients, but said she is relieved to be beyond the pandemic’s worst stages.

For Sellers and other health care workers, the lack of Covid-19 patients is a step toward easing the mental trauma that responding to the pandemic created...

The declining number of Covid-19 hospital patients can be credited to the success of vaccinations, according to health care workers, who urged Americans to get vaccinated...

Jeremy Faust, a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said that as vaccine eligibility expanded to more age groups, he began to see fewer Covid-19 patients on his shifts.

“Most of the serious critical care that we were providing a year ago or last spring was Covid related, and now almost none of it is,” Faust said.

Faust said it's been weeks since he's seen a Covid-19 patient during one of his shifts, but continues to urge younger adults in particular to get vaccinated. ...