“What I worry is, as people wait to see this idea of a further spike in hospitalizations or ICU admissions, is that those numbers may not play out because we’ve already hit the top of the graph,” exceeding hospital capacity, they clarified. That can throw hospitalization numbers for omicron off: “They can’t even count the number of admissions because those people are not able to even arrive at the steps of the E.D.,” Walker said. Overflowing hospitals send patients hundreds of miles away and divert ambulances. And both of those things right now are at such critically low levels that even without omicron, I think we would be incredibly stressed.”Īcross the country, hospitals are warning against coming to the emergency department unless it’s a true emergency, as patients wait for hours or days to be seen. “It’s human expertise and laborers, but it’s also the actual supplies themselves. That’s like the simplest technology that we have in health care,” Walker said, incredulous. Saline flushes are the most basic tool that you need to do I.V. “One hospital had run out of saline flushes. Supply chain woes are hitting hospitals, as well, with masks and other protective gear once again running low. It’s not just a lack of hospital beds or ventilators: It’s having enough staff to care for everyone as the entire country lights up in bright red with cases and hospitalizations. “We’ve seen all these case counts spiking, but you know, ‘What we really need to look for is the number of hospitalizations to get a sense of how severe this really is.’ But the reality is, we’ve already hit the ceiling on many of these graphs.” Walker’s local hospitals are already 20 or 30 percent over capacity. “People keep talking about how hospitalizations are a lagging indicator of the severity of illness, right?” Walker said. “Almost every health system is operating on fumes.” program director at the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told me. Rae Walker, associate professor and Ph.D. “We currently have a health care system that is actively collapsing, if not already collapsed, in many spaces,” Dr. The best way to judge severity among people is still hospitalizations and deaths-but that’s becoming increasingly difficult to measure. “As those infections skyrocket, what is this going to do to our already-strained health care system that appears to be hanging on a thread?” “If you keep doing this every day-with infections, they can at some points go exponential,” Martinez said. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, warned on Thursday.Īnd even if it is a milder version of the virus, its high transmissibility cancels out those gains. “While omicron does appear to be less severe compared to delta, especially in those vaccinated, it does not mean it should be categorized as ‘mild,’” Dr. It’s possible, for someone who is not vaccinated or hasn’t encountered Covid before, that omicron will be just as severe as the virus that wrought devastation throughout 2020. Omicron may be less severe than delta-but delta was more severe than previous variants, recent research shows. And vaccination can’t entirely make up for vulnerabilities.* It’s possible, for someone who is not vaccinated or hasn’t encountered Covid before, that omicron will be just as severe as the virus that wrought devastation throughout 2020. is showing signs of much worse outcomes, with hospitalizations rising quickly in the wake of surging cases-possibly because of an older, sicker population with lower immunity. Waves in South Africa and Europe, for instance, began falling nearly as rapidly as they rose, with much lower hospitalization rates than previous surges. Until now, other countries’ experiences with omicron have also been comforting. “If the animal data potentially looks different, then you just have to think about why it could look different.” “As the virus continues to evolve, are the animal models going to still faithfully recapitulate what has happened in humans?” Martinez wonders. But it’s also possible that the virus, as it rips through millions of people, is picking up mutations that make it more efficient in humans than in animals-which means making predictions based on studies in animals could become even more fraught.
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