A Shrinking Band of Southern Nurses, Neck-Deep in Another Covid Wave
The New York Times
The exodus of medical workers during the pandemic has been especially brutal for the small, nonprofit safety-net hospitals where millions of Americans seek care.
PASCAGOULA, Miss. — Bobbie Anne Sison was heading to the hospital just before dawn when she got a panicked call from one of her best nurses saying she couldn’t come to work because her car had overheated on Route 63. Ms. Sison, a nurse manager at Pascagoula Hospital, slammed on the brakes, made a U-turn and raced to fetch her.
“We have staff members dropping like flies from Covid so there was no way I was going to leave her on the side of the road,” Ms. Sison said a few hours later as she walked the corridors of her 350-bed hospital, which has been steadily filling with Covid patients after a monthslong lull.
On Sunday, 106 coronavirus patients were being treated at Singing River Health System, a county-owned network of three small hospitals along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, up from a dozen or so patients at the beginning of the month. With 40 percent of all Covid-19 tests in Pascagoula coming back positive and about 100 hospital employees out sick, Ms. Sison was trying not to think about what the coming days would bring.
