ST. GEORGE — The Utah National Guard was deployed Tuesday to St. George Regional Hospital to aid in staffing the hospital that has been consistently near capacity or above since August, Utah Department of Health and hospital officials said.
It is the first time the Utah National Guard’s COVID-19 Joint Task Force has been deployed to a hospital setting in the state.
“The cavalry is on its way,” the administrator of the hospital, Mitch Cloward, told St. George News. “We need help. Our people are tired.”
The omicron variant has taken COVID-19 patient levels to their highest of the pandemic, which has had a domino effect to put the hospital at capacity or above and also added to the local COVID-19 death toll. Four Southern Utah residents were added Tuesday by the Utah Department of Health to those who have died locally of COVID-19, all from Washington County.
“We’ve been operating at capacity for a long time, and our ICU has been over 100% capacity for months since in the summertime,” said St. George Regional Hospital Operations Manager Mark Evans.
That said, after the receding in omicron variant infections last week there are signs that now hospitalizations are receding as well.
As of Tuesday morning, 258 of the 284 beds at St. George Regional were filled with 62 COVID-19 patients. While still high, it is a drop from where they have been the last few weeks, including a record of more than 90 COVID-19 patients a few weeks ago.
But Evans said just because the patient count is showing signs of lessening doesn’t mean the help isn’t too late.
“I think we have 30 positions down in (environmental services) and maybe 25 in our food services that we’re trying to hire. It’s just been a struggle,” Evans said. “We’ve had people working many long overtime hours, and you can only do that so long. It’s not sustainable. ”
There were 57 National Guard members who arrived Tuesday ranging from units from Cedar City to units from Northern Utah. There will be 11 guardsmen assigned specifically to the hospital, while the others divide their time between the hospital and long-term care facilities in the area, including the Southern Utah Veterans Home in Ivins.
Guard and hospital officials said the additional guardsmen should be here until at least April 1, which is when the federal funding runs out, though the White House has voiced that they may be adding additional funding.
It won’t be the first time the guard has helped in Southern Utah, but the first time they are relieving staff at a hospital in the state. National guardsmen have helped staff COVID-19 testing sites, including at Tech Ridge and vaccination sites where the Utah Department of Health has been involved.
The U.S. military has also been used to fill staffing shortages, including at the Southern Utah Monoclonal Antibody Clinic.
That clinic served as an inspiration for Steve Ikuta, who is the south area manager of emergency management for Intermountain Healthcare, and Evans to work with Utah Department of Health teams they were already working at the antibodies clinic to come up with a staffing solution at the hospital in camouflage.
“Steve’s got a reputation in the state and is well known. And since we have the department down here with the antibodies clinic, it was just natural conversations,” Evans said.
But the task for the guardsmen will be different at the hospital than helping people get tested or providing escorts. Many of the jobs this time will include changing dirty linens, picking up trash and serving food.
“This is a mission that we haven’t done since the beginning of COVID two years ago,” said Lt. Commander Erick Wiedmeier, who leads the Utah National Guard COVID-19 Joint Task Force. “We are here to augment staff and support their hospital staff in caring for patients.”
But nurses who usually devote their time to helping patients have recently had to add taking out the trash to their duties with a lack of staff caused by caregivers being out with COVID themselves or just more patients than the hospital has ever had to take care of before. And Evans said the hospital has had the same problem as restaurants in the area as far as getting answers to help wanted signs.
“I really can’t overstate how grateful we are to have support for a few weeks to give our caregivers a little break,” Evans said. “We’ve had nurses taking out garbage for a little while, instead of having their whole focus on our patients.”
At St. George Regional, the guard will fill non-clinical roles under three main tasks: cleaning rooms and facilities under environmental services, food services and patient transport.
“A patient room is not the same as cleaning the mailroom. There’s certain levels of standards that we have to meet,” Evans said. “And we have to feed patients and feed our staff.”
As far as the types of jobs they will be doing, Staff Sgt. Antonio Palacios, out of the Salt Lake City area, said he is more than happy to do them – especially, he said, when he knows he’s helping hospital staff who have been overtaxed.
“It honestly doesn’t bother me much,” he said. “I don’t let the little things bother me. It gets in the way of the job.”
While the people in military fatigues are usually honored as instant heroes, Wiedmeier said he feels like he’s coming to the aid of other heroes.
“These staff members have been at this working hard the last two years,” Wiedmeier said. “Really, they’re the heroes. The health care providers of Utah.”
COVID-19 information resources
St. George News has made every effort to ensure the information in this story is accurate at the time it was written. However, as the situation and science surrounding the coronavirus continues to evolve, it’s possible that some data has changed.
Check the resources below for up-to-date information and resources.
- Testing Sites
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- World Health Organization
- Utah Department of Health
- Safe Southern Utah
- Información sobre coronavirus en español
- Intermountain Healthcare
- To Donate and Volunteer to Help
- Utah COVID-19 Long Haulers
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