GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A Gwinnett County hospital CEO is pleading with people to get vaccinated in an open letter published by the Gwinnett Daily Post.
Piedmont Eastside CEO Trent Lind said in the letter published Saturday that of all the patients receiving critical care for COVID-19 in his hospital, none of them have been vaccinated against the virus.
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“Patients in our hospital with the highly contagious delta variant are younger and sicker than ever before,” Lind wrote. “During this delta surge, Piedmont Eastside has seen patients as young as 26 years old placed on a ventilator due to COVID-19.”
Lind said that of all of Piedmont Healthcare’s 16 hospitals across Georgia, 99% who have died from COVID-19 were unvaccinated. At least 94% who have ended up on ventilators are unvaccinated.
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Only 56% of Gwinnett County residents have gotten their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. At least 85 Gwinnett County residents have died of COVID-19 since August 1.
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“A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supports what we are seeing at the local level,” Lind said. “The CDC found that, this spring and summer, people who were not fully vaccinated were over 10 times more likely to be hospitalized, and 11 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated.”