FORT CAMPBELL, KY (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Blanchfield Army Community Hospital recently sounded the alarm about a significant rise in critical COVID-19 cases on post.

While active-duty soldiers are now required to get the COVID vaccine, that mandate doesn’t apply to family members or veterans who also rely on BACH for medical services. Like many hospitals across the nation, BACH doesn’t have the capacity to handle all of the critical COVID cases that are coming in, and that’s taking up space needed for other emergencies.

“I ran into a situation recently where I had to transfer a patient to a higher level of care,” Maj. David Henley, head of Inpatient Services at BACH, said in a video posted Monday on the hospital Facebook page. “We spent hours calling hospitals as far north as Cincinnati, Ohio, as far south as southern Alabama, and about that far east and west and we could not find a single ICU bed. They are all full of COVID.”

They finally found a bed in Virginia.

When reached Wednesday about the situation at BACH, hospital spokeswoman Laura Boyd said, “BACH has sufficient personnel to support COVID testing, inpatient services and vaccinations.”

“As the majority of the nation experienced a spike in COVID testing and patient hospital COVID admissions the past couple of weeks, BACH also experienced a spike in COVID testing and admissions.”

Healthy in 20s, now critically ill

Dr. Henley emphasized in the video that COVID has changed a lot over the last year and a half, and is now more dangerous to more age groups, healthy and unhealthy alike.

“A lot of the earlier messaging when COVID first came out was, ‘Oh, you’re going to be fine if you’re young, if you’re healthy; you only need to worry about it if you’re over 35, 45, 55.’ … That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. We are seeing large numbers of young men and women under the age of 40. In fact, I’ve had several in their 20s that are getting critically ill with COVID-19 and requiring high levels of oxygen support, prolonged hospital stays; and unfortunately, several of them are even requiring intubation.”

Many of these patients have no other medical conditions, he said, and almost all are unvaccinated.

“We have only had two patients fully vaccinated who have required admission for oxygen support, and what’s astounding is both of those individuals had significant underlying immunocompromised other medical problems that led to that,” Henley said.

“Not a single other (hospitalized) person has been vaccinated, and they’re the ones that are getting significantly ill. Those that are vaccinated, they may get COVID, however, they’re either asymptomatic or they’re not getting sick enough to visit me and my team.”

Difficult news for patients

Another member of that team, Maj. Nicholas Weiss, chief of emergency medicine at BACH, said in a video posted Tuesday that he’s had to have tough talks with patients facing death on a hospital bed.

“It’s extremely difficult to have that conversation with them,” Dr. Weiss said, “to see the fear in their eyes and to have to tell them – ‘I don’t know how you’re going to do after we have to put you on this ventilator, I don’t know when the next time you’re going to be able to talk to your loved one is, I don’t know when we’re going to be able to do these things. I hope it happens, but I can’t guarantee it’ – it’s extremely hard.”

Getting the vaccine, Henley said, “will keep you out of the hospital, it will prevent the long-term complications, it will prevent the unnecessary death. It doesn’t matter if you are 12 years old or you’re 95 years old, it can affect you; it does affect people in those age groups, we are seeing it.”

“I am imploring people to get the vaccine so you don’t ever have to see me or my team here at Blanchfield.”

How to get vaccinated

COVID triage and testing is offered at BACH weekdays 7:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. and weekends 7:45 to 11:45 a.m. The hospital appointment line is 270-798-4677 or 931-431-4677, option 2.

Vaccines are available at the Passenger Processing Center next to Campbell Army Airfield.