Fred Romankewiz was on his way to be vaccinated, but he did not feel well, so he canceled the appointment and got a Covid-19 test instead. Although he was an inch from the coronavirus finish line, the 54-year-old salesman for construction materials from Lansing now tested positive.
“What’s really frustrating to me is that it’s been a year and what – now three months, and I’ve played it down to tea. I mean, I did everything right,” Romankewiz said. “And then to make it happen.”
Romankewiz watched TV, responding to a steady stream of text messages and jokes from his hospital bed in Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital.
“I felt like I was going ten rounds with Mike Tyson,” he said. “I was absolutely exhausted. I mean, I felt like I was beaten, I felt like I was in a car accident. I mean, it was crazy.”
Romankewiz, who leads a healthy life and has no underlying conditions, said he contracted the virus from his 19-year-old son, Andy. His wife, Betsy, who was fully vaccinated, also contracted the virus but suffered minor symptoms.
Jim Dover, CEO and president of Sparrow Health System, a major healthcare provider in central Michigan, said two things are driving the current boom: pandemic fatigue and mutations in the coronavirus that have made it more contagious and potentially deadly.
“This variant is more virulent, and therefore more contagious, and thus easier to catch,” Dover said. “The second is that everyone is tired of wearing masks, so you will go out and see a lack of social distance, the lack of masks. The virus is invisible and people do not know that they are walking through a cloud of Covid , and next thing you know, they’re infected. ‘
Dangerous variant distributed by the state
At Beaumont Hospital’s Royal Oak, a facility of the largest healthcare provider in Wolverine State, the prevalence of the B.1.1.7 variant is clear.
Dr. Justin Skrzynski is a hospital in Covid – a title that did not exist a year ago – which means he specializes in the care of Covid patients. He said they send a small sample of some of their cases to the state for DNA analysis.
“Right now, the usual Covid test is what we’re doing – it’s just showing Covid (or) no Covid yet,” Skrzynski said. “But we send a lot of those out to the state and we see something like 40% of our patients now (with) B.1.1.7.”
Tina Catron, 44, is under Skrzynski’s care at Beaumont Health’s Royal Oak plant. The mother of two said she thinks her family has been infected with coronavirus by her children’s soccer league.
‘We’re not 100% sure,’ she said of how they all got it, ‘but we think from the football field with the parents, even though we’re all masked. From the sidelines everyone is screaming. And I think what happened is that my husband was with my son, his football game. And he brought it home. ‘
Fighting the virus on many fronts
Health officials in Michigan have indicated that schools and youth sports are potential vectors for the virus. Catron says her 9-year-old Levi and 7-year-old Jesse had no symptoms and her husband became very ill but was not admitted to the hospital.
According to her, she was shocked when she was admitted to the hospital. She is healthy, active and has no underlying conditions, but needs hospitalization after developing pneumonia.
“You feel like you’re suffocating a little bit,” she said, clearing her throat and still struggling to breathe.
Michigan – whose Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has suffered severe setbacks from Republicans, business owners and others over her ongoing coronavirus restrictions – is fighting the virus on several fronts. Vaccinations are about to begin, and every week about 600,000 Michiganders get a chance; reopening the economy, with some restrictions lifted; and many times back to pre-pandemic life without masks or social distance.
The age group 40-49 years looks like a similar increase, with 58 being admitted daily, compared to 33 in the fall. For 60-year-olds and older, hospitalizations declined sharply as vaccinations increased.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services in Michigan, 35.2% of adults in Michigan have been vaccinated at least one dose and 21.5% have been completely vaccinated.
Health workers ‘thrown a bow’
Dr Lynda Misra, medical director of the Covid unit at the Royal Oak plant in Beaumont Health, said the increase in cases was sharp and that they were not sure where they were in this current boom. Whatever it entails, she said, she and her staff will face the challenge, but the virus is resilient and difficult to fight.
“Each boom brought with it different challenges,” she said. “We felt very strongly that we had this disease under attack, but then we got a bow ball.”
The weight and stress of the ongoing pandemic become apparent when talking to health professionals.
Lindsay Muenchen, a registered nurse in the Covid unit at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, said she thought the worst was behind them. “The day I came in and saw that our unit was full of Covid patients again, it was really difficult,” she said. “I had tears in my eyes.”
Dora Hoppes, also at Sparrow Hospital, has been working as a registered nurse for 22 years. She said the past year has been the most difficult.
Her voice cracked and emotions came up at the first question of our short interview. When asked why it’s so hard to talk about the past year, she gestures down the hall. “I only saw it yesterday,” she said, fighting back tears. “I died a patient who is very fresh every day.”
The stress of being constantly surrounded by so much illness and death is the hardest part of a job she loves, she said. “I would like to come to work now and just take care of a person who is here because they need their gallbladder.”
CNN’s Linh Tran and Frank Bivona contributed to this report.