Near Santa Monica-UCLA Hospital Monday, August 02, 2021
Staff members during morning rounds at the I.C.U. at Providence St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif. A new influx of patients after a period of optimism has been crushing for some of them. I don't know what is happening at Santa Monica-UCLA Hospital. But this is what is happening at Providence St. John's, only a few blocks away. Pass it on to any vaccineresistant folks you know. A New Surge at a Santa Monica I.C.U.
They thought the worst of the pandemic was behind them. Then a new wave of cases arrived at the I.C.U. at Providence Saint John’s Health Center. By Isadora Kosofsky and Shawn Hubler, Photographs by Isadora Kosofsky Aug. 1, 2021, NY Times SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Two months ago at Providence Saint John’s Health Center, Dr. Morris Grabie stood at a makeshift plastic wall in the intensive care unit and prayed. “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha’olam,” he began in Hebrew, the sterile divider behind him sealing off the patients with Covid-19 from the uninfected. “Blessed are you, Adonai our God, sovereign of all, who has kept us alive, sustained us and brought us to this season.” Around the physician at the hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., a small army in scrubs — doctors, nurses, technicians — bowed their heads, bearing witness to what seemed to be the beginning of the end of the pandemic. Sixty-nine lives on the ward had been claimed by the virus. Pain and grief, life and death, fear and loss — month after grinding month — all of it had unfolded behind that thin divider. And yet on this day, not a single patient in the Saint John’s I.C.U. had tested positive for the coronavirus. Dr. Grabie turned, and the I.C.U.’s medical director, helped by a respiratory therapist, zipped the wall open. “We were all in awe,” recalled the medical director, Dr. Terese Hammond. UCLA Faculty Association Blog: 3rd Quarter 2021
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