'We need your help': A message from St. Peter's Health caregivers

Photo by Thom Bridge, Helena Independent Record
Intensive care unit nurse Brooke O’Neil takes a moment to herself after caring for a COVID-19 patient in December.

September 1, 2021

Dear Community:

It’s us again – the caregivers from St. Peter’s Health. We shared an urgent message with you in early November 2020 encouraging everyone to mask up, avoid gathering in groups and take other important prevention measures to help slow the spread of COVID-19. Our message now?

“We need your help, again, Montana.”

Today, as we see COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations surge after vaccination rates have flattened, we’re asking for your help again. If you’re not vaccinated and eligible, please get vaccinated. It’s safe, free and readily available in our community.

Most importantly, vaccines are the most effective tool we have in the fight against COVID-19.

Early in the pandemic, we didn’t have many tools to help fight the new virus. We all made significant sacrifices to slow the spread and save lives. Now, we know that vaccines not only help slow transmission, but also help prevent serious illness, hospitalization and death. Today, well over 90 percent of people in hospitals across the country due to COVID-19 complications are not vaccinated.

Vaccination efforts during the past seven months continue to confirm that vaccines are safe and effective. In the U.S., over 180 million people are fully vaccinated, including hundreds of thousands of health care workers. On Aug. 23, the FDA granted full approval of the Pfizer vaccination.

The unvaccinated population leaves thousands of people—including children—more vulnerable to the virus. Continued spread encourages dangerous mutations like we’re seeing with the much more contagious Delta variant, which is causing a surge of hospitalizations and deaths among the unvaccinated across our country. It is not uncommon recently at St. Peter’s to have half, or more than half of our ICU beds filled with people experiencing complications from the virus, and a quarter of our medical floor beds.

When someone is hospitalized with COVID-19, we use all the tools we have to make them better again, but by the time someone unvaccinated is exposed, we’ve lost the most effective tool in our fight against the virus: vaccination.

That’s why we’re asking for your help again. Please get vaccinated if you haven’t. While we may want to be done with COVID-19, the virus isn’t done with us.

As always, we’re in this together and together we’ll get through this.

Sincerely,

~ St. Peter’s Health Caregivers