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These Salem-area health care workers canceled their Thanksgiving plans. They’re asking you to do the same.

Joseph Rad, certified physician assistant and board member of the Marion Polk Medical Society (Courtesy/Marion Polk Medical Society)

Joseph Rad was looking forward to seeing his parents over Thanksgiving for the first time in two years. 

Rad, a board member of the Marion-Polk Medical Society, is a certified physician assistant. He works for Salem Pulmonary Associates and spent much of the spring in the Salem Hospital intensive care unit caring for Covid patients.  

When Oregon’s Covid-related hospitalizations fell over the summer, Rad thought he might have a safe window to travel home to Pennsylvania. He booked a ticket for Thanksgiving. 

Then the fall surge started. 

“Every night we would get more Covid patients, intubating more COVID patients,” he said.  

The hospital reported 40 people hospitalized with Covid last week, the highest since the pandemic began. 

Rad saw the trend weeks ago, but said he resisted canceling his plans. 

“It was something I didn’t want to come to the realization of,” he said. “You kind of try to justify things in your head like, ‘How can I make this work?’” 

But on an overnight shift a few weeks ago, as he saw more Covid patients being admitted from the emergency room, he knew it was time to cancel. He called his dad and said he wouldn’t be making the trip. 

Rad now plans to cook his own turkey at home – a first effort – and enjoy it with some wine in the company of his two rescue birds, Zeus and Gunner. He laughed describing his solo Thanksgiving plans, but said seeing his parents isn’t worth potentially spreading a deadly virus to vulnerable family members. 

“They’re at higher risk and you might not realize it. There’s plenty of asymptomatic carriers. You could directly or indirectly be causing serious harm to somebody’s health,” he said. 

Rad is among the Oregon doctors, nurses and health care workers pleading with Oregonians to alter their Thanksgiving plans as Covid-related hospitalizations climb to record levels around the state. 

They join the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who last week took the extraordinary step of urging Americans to avoid holiday travel in light of the pandemic as hospitals around the U.S. are being overrun with Covid patients. 

“At this time, in-person social gatherings are dangerous and irresponsible,” the Oregon Medical Association, Oregon Nurses Association and Oregon Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems said in a joint statement Nov. 23. “Until a safe and effective vaccine is widely available, our best advice to our patients and to all Oregonians is this: celebrate the holidays safely with only those who live in your own home.” 

Oregon has fared better than most U.S. states at containing the spread of Covid, but newly-diagnosed cases continued climbing rapidly over the weekend, with Marion County reporting 183 on Sunday – a new single-day record. Oregon has twice recorded more than 1,500 new cases of Covid daily in the past week, and as of Nov. 24 had 474 people hospitalized with Covid, up from 378 one week ago. 

While most people who get the virus have mild illnesses, about 6.5% of Marion County residents diagnosed with Covid end up hospitalized, according to the county’s Covid data dashboard. Health care workers in Oregon have for weeks warned that rapidly rising infection rates could overwhelm local hospitals, something medical providers in many corners of the U.S. are reporting. 

As of Nov. 24, Oregon Health Authority reported 79 people hospitalized with Covid in region 2, which includes Marion, Polk and Yamhill counties. That number is up from 60 patients in region 2 one week ago. 

Salem Hospital reported a sharp rise in Covid-positive patients in the first two weeks of November, according to its website, though the situation here is less dire than in Portland. The hospital has not publicly said they’re concerned about being overrun or announced any steps to limit non-essential care, as some Portland hospitals have done. But in a statement Nov. 23, Dr. Jasmin Chaudhary, a Salem Health infectious disease doctor, echoed the concern.

“Even though it is not easy and requires some sacrifice, Salem Health believes we all need to do our part to protect the vulnerable and stop the rapid spread of COVID-19. We join the CDC and other organizations across the state urging that holiday celebrations this year occur with members of your own household,” Chaudhary wrote.

Public health authorities, including Marion County’s health department and Oregon Health Authority, have urged Oregonians to keep celebrations small, combining no more than two households, and to wear masks except when eating or drinking and maintain physical distance indoors. 

Doctors said part of the challenge they face in conveying the severity of Covid to the public is that the worst effects remain largely out of the public eye. 

Dr. Steve Vets, who directs the emergency department at Santiam Hospital, said Oregon has avoided the dire trajectory of many other states because people have largely listened to medical advice and been careful about wearing masks and avoiding large gatherings. 

“In Oregon, it’s weird. If you’re not in the hospital, it’s really hard to wrap your head around the fact that something’s abnormal,” he said. “We’ve done pretty well because of people’s willingness to sacrifice. But then it creates this double-edged sword where people don’t see the horrible things happening so they tend to not believe it.” 

Vets said Santiam Hospital now has three Covid patients – more than they’ve had earlier in the pandemic, but not enough to overrun the hospital. More employees are out quarantined too, he said. 

The trend isn’t enough for him to go into “Chicken Little mode,” he said, but he called the rate of new infections in Oregon a “breathtaking swoop.” 

Like other health care workers, he’s concerned about what lies ahead if large numbers of Oregonians travel for the holidays and gather with people they don’t regularly see. 

“It’s a factor of the numbers – the more people you add into this thing, the worse it is. How many times do you cast the dice?” he said.

Dr. Mark Fischl, a longtime board member of the Marion Polk Medical Society and internal medicine doctor at Salem Clinic (Courtesy/Marion Polk Medical Society)

Dr. Mark Fischl, a longtime board member for the Marion-Polk Medical Society, said he understands people are exhausted and feel isolated after months of pandemic restrictions. 

But with effective vaccines on the horizon and Covid cases surging, Fischl said it’s more important now than ever to stay the course. 

“We’re all burning out. It’s been going on since March, it’s been a long time, it’s been hard on everybody. But now’s the time to say ‘I can see the end,’” he said. 

He said holding a traditional Thanksgiving now would be like a marathon runner going all-out to finish the race, only to pass out 100 yards from the finish line. 

“These are people’s lives. We wait a little bit and things are going to get better,” he said. 

Fischl, 54, said he and his wife usually cook a feast and have his 81-year-old father visit from Vancouver, Washington.  

He’s an internal medicine doctor at Salem Clinic, so he’s not directly caring for Covid patients, and the clinic has expanded virtual appointments and taken other steps to limit exposure for providers. 

Still, this year, he said, they’re cooking at home and delivering a packaged Thanksgiving meal to his dad’s doorstep. 

“I’m out and around a lot of people and my dad’s the healthiest 81-year-old you could imagine but still, he’s 81,” Fischl said. 

They haven’t seen as much of each other this year because of the pandemic, but Fischl said it’s worth giving up one holiday to know they’ll be able to spend more time together after a vaccine is widely available. 

“If I was the vector for his illness and he didn’t make it, that’d be hard to live with,” he said. 

Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.

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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.