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Dayton Healthcare Workers Say Another COVID Wave Is Coming

Lindsey Call describes how she and her coworkers used their personal phones to help patients dying from COVID-19 say goodbye to their loved ones. Call is an ICU nurse at Miami Valley Hospital. She's wearing hospital attire and is in a medical office room.
Chloe Murdock
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Screen Capture
Lindsey Call describes how she and her coworkers used their personal phones to help patients dying from COVID-19 say goodbye to their loved ones. Call is an ICU nurse at Miami Valley Hospital.

COVID-19 cases have been rising in the Miami Valley. And the region’s healthcare workers are getting increasingly worried about it.

At a press conference on Monday, Dayton’s frontline healthcare workers urged people to go get vaccinated. They say they’re worried that the increasing number of cases will once again strain the healthcare system.
Lindsey Call is an ICU nurse at Miami Valley Hospital. She says that during the second wave of the pandemic last fall, she and her coworkers were performing CPR on four to five COVID patients every 12 hours.

“We are expecting a third wave, and we’re scared,” Call said.

The Delta variant is ten times more contagious than other kinds of COVID-19.

Jennifer Lutz is an Emergency Department Nurse at Mercy Health Hospital in Urbana. She said that as a hospital serving a rural area, many of their patients with COVID must be transferred to surrounding hospitals.
Chloe Murdock
/
Screen Capture
Jennifer Lutz is an Emergency Department Nurse at Mercy Health Hospital in Urbana. She said that as a hospital serving a rural area, many of their patients with COVID must be transferred to surrounding hospitals.

Jennifer Lutz is an Emergency Department Nurse at Mercy Health Hospital in Urbana. Lutz got COVID last year. She coughed up blood, and was on oxygen for over seven weeks. She says that could have been avoided if a vaccine had been available.

“It makes critical differences in people’s lives," Lutz said. "People don’t want to be as sick as I was.”

Healthcare workers and community leaders also urged people to go get fully vaccinated. They said people who have skipped the second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines are still vulnerable to the virus. And they’re starting to show up in Dayton hospitals.