Hamilton of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. “Are we going to see deaths increase? Yes, we are,” said Ms. But the unprecedented number of cases may still lead to high levels of mortality. There is hope that vaccination coverage, improved medical treatment and the milder characteristics of the Omicron variant will mean that fewer infections end in death. hospitals with I.C.U.s recently reported that at least 95 percent of their critical care beds were full. Public health experts suggest monitoring Covid patients in intensive care as well as intensive care unit capacity to better gauge Covid’s impact on serious illness. “The absence of these details about hospitalizations in the available data just muddy the water as we try to understand Omicron’s impact,” Dr. (Federal data tracks some of this, but it is about two months behind.) National hospitalization data notably does not include up-to-date measures of severe illness, such as the number of people on ventilators or their length of stay. Salemi noted that a coronavirus infection can still exacerbate the primary illness of incidental patients pose a risk of infection to staffers and other patients and contribute to the overall strain on medical centers. Some hospitals are reporting that these patients may make up as much as half of their hospitalizations.ĭr. These “incidental patients” may be more prevalent right now because Omicron is so transmissible. Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, who tracks Covid data. “National data don’t allow us to distinguish between people hospitalized because of Covid-19 and those who happened to test positive while admitted for something else,” said Jason L. Hospitalization figures are not without flaws. Hospitals in some areas are already shutting down elective surgeries and must even treat critical care patients in emergency rooms.Īnd in parts of the country like the Midwest, hospitals may be in a more precarious situation - they were already under strain, having yet to recover from the Delta surge before Omicron-led illnesses began to rise. Hospitals, emergency rooms, urgent care centers and doctors’ offices are overburdened and understaffed across the country. What is clear is that the number of people hospitalized with Covid nationwide has already surpassed the peak of the Delta-led wave and is still rising steeply. Hospitalizations have not yet seen the same explosive growth as cases, but this metric tends to lag case counts, and it may be too early to gauge Omicron’s full impact. Hospitalizations reveal a system under strainīecause the Omicron variant appears to cause less severe illness, hospitalization figures may tell us less about the disease and more about the strain on the health care system, which has consequences for everyone. “We’ve had a month with Omicron and there’s just still a lot we don’t know.” “We’re still in a situation that needs caution,” said Ms. With so much risk for infection right now, public health experts say that keeping an eye on case counts and trends can encourage people to make decisions to protect themselves from infection and to avoid infecting those around them, like by getting a booster shot or wearing a mask indoors. “We are going to have a lot of people sick, and even if a smaller proportion of those individuals have really horrible illnesses and adverse outcomes, it’s still a lot of people,” said Janet Hamilton, the executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. The sharp rise in cases in many states could be followed by sharp falls, as observed in South Africa, but experts caution that the sheer volume of cases could still lead to significant numbers of extremely sick people, even from a variant that overall gives people less severe disease. Testing shortages are also limiting access, and experts say that a majority of results from popular at-home tests are not reported to public health departments. “We have a less severe variant, plus many are vaccinated, but evidence suggests the vaccines are not as good at preventing infection with Omicron as they were against Delta.”Īs high as the case counts are in many places, they are most certainly undercounted right now, as many Omicron infections are asymptomatic or mild and people may not know to test. Shama Cash-Goldwasser, a senior technical adviser at Resolve to Save Lives, a global health organization. “The circumstances have changed and we must adapt,” said Dr. Instead, they should serve as a warning for the country, to adjust behaviors and policies to reduce infections and protect the most vulnerable. While these case counts are staggering, experts say they are not as alarming as they might have been a few months or a year ago.
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