Ground zero

COEUR d’ALENE – For the first time in nearly two years, as of Sunday, Kootenai Health has zero COVID-19 patients in critical care.

Which is good, said Dr. Robert Scoggins.

“My group was excited about that,” he said Tuesday in a phone interview with The Press.

Kootenai Health is back to its normal 26-bed ICU for the first time since June 2020.

It had about 15 COVID-related patients on Tuesday. That’s well down from a high of about 150 in October, when it also had more than 40 COVID-19 patients in critical care.

While COVID-19 is retreating and life isn’t as stressful as it has been since the coronavirus arrived in Idaho in early 2020, it’s not back to work as usual at the area's largest hospital.

“I wouldn’t say it’s ever going to return to normal,” Scoggins said. “A lot of things have changed in the last two years.”

The daily battle at the height of new cases took an extraordinary toll on staff. It has been gut-wrenching for personnel to witness up close and personal what the virus did to people, particularly the elderly.

Turnover rose at Kootenai Health as the stress overwhelmed some. While many patients recovered from COVID-19, many died.

Deaths in the Panhandle Health District attributed to COVID-19 total 933. Total cases are nearly 60,000. Statewide deaths total 4,861, and cases stand at nearly 445,000, according to the state website.

Kootenai Health cared for thousands of COVID patients.

“I don’t think anybody is the same after going through this the last two years,” Scoggins said.

He makes it clear he's pleased with Kootenai Health for how it endured to help those with the disease that hit the respiratory system hard.

“I’m very proud of how our hospital has responded to this crisis and how we took care of as many patients as we did,” Scoggins said.

He said the entire staff of the hospital "stepped up and did an amazing job."

"I don’t think the community will ever know the extent to which this hospital and all the people that work here had to change what they did and adapt to a huge number of patients and how much work that takes to provide the care that we did."

He said Kootenai Health is de-escalating from the disaster management protocol it's been under for the past two years.

But staff still wear masks and practice social distancing. It is still receiving new COVID-19 patients, of all ages, ill to various degrees.

Staff became accustomed to a high volume of patients with a high level of illness.

Today, there are ways to mitigate the disease through therapeutics and vaccines easily available. Many infected now have natural immunity.

“The mission definitely dropped off,” Scoggins said. “Hopefully we’ll get to a point to where we don’t have to do the masks and social distance."

While Scoggins wants people to move on with their lives, he doesn’t want them to forget about COVID-19, what it did and what it is still doing today in some areas of the world.

Scoggins said he wants the community to know that COVID is a real disease that made many ill and killed many. Some will likely have chronic illness from it for the rest of their lives.

It's not gone, either.

“COVID has not followed all the rules of viruses we’ve seen in the past,” he said.

It could rebound if another variant emerges and immunity, either from prior infection or vaccines, wanes.

“We need to be prepared for that,” he said.

There is one more thing Scoggins wouldn’t mind happening.

Or not happening.

“I’d love to never take care of another COVID patient,” he said.