‘By far, it is the unvaccinated,’ in local COVID-19 hospital wards, says Northwestern Medicine doctor

Bob Manam, a doctor and infectious disease specialist with Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee and Valley West hospitals who’s spent the past nearly 530 days working the COVID-19 wards, said there’s been a “notable uptick” in virus-related admissions in the past two weeks in DeKalb County.

“The last 10 days have been even more significant,” Manam said Tuesday, addressing the COVID-19 surge rippling statewide and felt locally here, too.

Its catalyst, a delta variant of the virus that is highly contagious, spreads more quickly, and presents more severely leading to more hospitalizations.

“We’re seeing a more severe illness, so more oxygen demand, patients get sicker faster and when their oxygen demand is higher, the severity of the illness is great,” Manam said. “Usually it takes a while to heal the lungs so the length of [hospital] stay is also greater.”

And who, specifically, is Dr. Manam seeing this time around, this fourth wave of COVID-19?

“By far and away, it is the unvaccinated, and there are some much younger crowds in the group — in their 30s, up to 45,” Manam said, adding average hospital stays seem to last an average of 14 days, with heavy rehabilitation needed on the body after. “Fortunately, our seniors have really gotten the message and most of them have been vaccinated.”

And as COVID-19 hospitalizations across Illinois in children creep up, is Manam seeing that trend locally in DeKalb County? Not yet, he said.

“I do not see pediatric patients but I do not know of that in our hospitals,” said Manam, who works COVID-19 wards at Kishwaukee Hospital in DeKalb and Valley West in Sandwich, among others in Aurora.

Some patients, he’s noted, have traveled to other states, but many seem to have just been living life and contract the virus.

“None of them have said that they went out looking for the virus. It found them,” Manam said. “Some are under the assumption that, ‘Hey, I’ve been doing this for one year, nothing has ever happened to me so I’m not going to get vaccinated.’ And then bam, they get it.”

The younger patients needing hospital stays stands in stark contrast to the COVID-19 hospitalizations of 2020, Manam said, where nursing-home residents suffered the largest and deadliest waves, DeKalb County’s elderly population the hardest hit.

Now, with the arrival of delta, the virus’ virulence, pitted against a local elderly 65 and older population — which reports the sixth-highest fully vaccinated rate of seniors in the state, at 87.78%, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health — has turned to those who lack that protection, mainly the younger crowd, Manam said.

Manam said he recently treated a local “gym rat,” who seemed surprised to have contracted the virus.

“I saw one gentleman a couple weeks back. He’s a gym rat, 6-3, 220 pounds, and he said he never thought he would get sick,” Manam recalled. “And if he did, then he thought it wouldn’t be a big deal. Some of the physically fit people are surprised. They blame it on the messaging they thought was right.”

Manam said he thinks public messaging related to vaccination facts amid the COVID-19 delta variant have “been all over the place.”

He said every time there’s a “reasonable message, there’s a greater counter message” that he’s witnessed flipping through television media channels. He pointed to frustrations when a medical expert is on a show talking about natural immunity from the virus, and those words are taken out of context.

Doctors and nurses working the floors of the COVID-19 wards at Kishwaukee and Valley West, who Manam said “are hanging in there,” are noticing several trends, Manam said. Patients are coming into the hospital who already lived through a bout of COVID-19, or who thought they had COVID-19 in the past, or who are unvaccinated who “seem to do a lot worse than those who are vaccinated.”

“This is a viral infection. This is very, very contagious, absolutely,” Manam said. “The activity of the virus is very high. You mix that with unvaccinated or vaccine-naive patients and you couple that with no masking, it’s going to happen.”

[ How vaccinated is where you live? Fully vaccinated residents by ZIP code in Illinois ]

Manam said yes, breakthrough cases — dubbed such because they’re when a fully vaccinated person contracts COVID-19 — do happen, but the cases often are less severe, and those who end up hospitalized with breakthrough cases already had other health problems.

“We have few breakthroughs, much more mild illnesses,” Manam said. “Usually they’ve got some other comorbidity feature, they’re much older, have leukemia or went through chemotherapy, have no spleen, things like that. Some of them get pretty sick but they do OK.”

What are the odds that the delta variant catches up with someone if they’re unvaccinated? Manam thinks inevitable, “if they’re in society, yeah.”

“You’d have to walk around and go over every nook and cranny to find measles or chickenpox, but this one is everywhere,” Manam said. “It’s very contagious. You put that mix out there, [and] it’s a pretty good chance you’ll probably get it.”

Manam said while the COVID-19 hospitalizations across DeKalb County are manageable, he’s looking ahead to the fall, especially since local public schools, including Northern Illinois University (which requires vaccines for all students and employees per the statewide mandate), have returned to full-time learning. A COVID-19 vaccine is not yet available for anyone under 12.

As of Sunday, about 21% intensive care beds were available statewide and about 17% of Intensive Care Unit beds were available in Region 1, according to IDPH data. As of Aug. 21, 13.3% of ICU beds were available in DeKalb County, per IDPH data.

According to Illinois health care report card data, Kishwaukee Hospital has 98 total beds, including 12 ICU beds, and Valley West Hospital has 25 total beds, including four ICU beds.

Northwestern Medicine officials previously said entire intensive care units, which includes separated patient rooms with one bed in each, at Northwestern Medicine hospitals had been converted to negative air pressure rooms, which helps if a COVID-19 patient is hospitalized and needs to be intubated or placed on a ventilator to help them breathe.

Manam said hospitalizations still remain below the surge that swept through the county in the winter of 2020.

And what does he think about the growing division between those who seem wiling to get the vaccine as the pandemic slinks toward a second full year, and those who do not?

“What I would say to that is I would ask they recalculate quickly and look at the situation,” Manam said. “This is what’s happening right now. Waiting a year to see if there’s any problem with the vaccine is not a good plan because the urgency is now. If you really are going to mask up and not be around people, that’s one option. But if you think that you can just get this and it’ll be nothing, that would be a surprise.”

He said he supports the recent mandates enacted by Gov. JB Pritzker last week to stem viral spread before the colder months set in and before school cases surge. And he continues to encourage people, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, to wear masks indoors and when they can’t social distance.

“Why would anybody want somebody else to be sick?” he said. “If you were in charge, what would you do? You can’t do nothing because that doesn’t work.”

Daily Chronicle reporter Katie Finlon contributed to this report.