US COVID hospitalization hits record high: Shot

Last week, a healthcare worker wore a mask before entering the negative pressure room with a COVID-19 patient in the ICU ward of the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts.

AFP via Joseph Prezioso / Getty Images

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AFP via Joseph Prezioso / Getty Images

Last week, a healthcare worker wore a mask before entering the negative pressure room with a COVID-19 patient in the ICU ward of the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts.

AFP via Joseph Prezioso / Getty Images

The surge due to Omicron has led to a surge in hospitalizations for COVID-19 throughout the United States, leading to new infections. Pandemic high This week, 145,982 patients were hospitalized.

According to the data of the Department of Health and Human Services domestic 5,400 more hospitals tracked, but this is well above the record high recorded in January last year.

Currently, COVID patients make up about 30% of all ICU beds nationwide, and there are pediatric COVID hospitalizations. It ’s also the best rate. Of a pandemic.

Record numbers show how quickly Omicron variants ran through the country. Overall, infectious diseases are at record levels, with an average of more than 700,000 new cases per day in the United States.

Researchers and healthcare professionals also warn that congestion can lead to avoidable increases in deaths as clinicians struggle to provide normal levels of care. ..

“Things are looking tough and are much worse in many ways than they were a year ago,” he said. Dr. Doug White, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Emergency Doctor.

Crisis warnings from state and hospital leaders

Hospitals are under stress from all over the country Maryland To Missouri, The number of hospitals infected with COVID-19 has exceeded or is approaching record highs. State and hospital leaders and health care workers have issued some of the more dire warnings of the pandemic.

“We are closer to a crisis than ever before,” he said. Dr. John Lynch At a recent press conference at UW Medicine in Seattle.

In Maryland, Governor Larry Hogan, who declared a state of emergency, Said last week The next few weeks will be “the most difficult time of the whole pandemic”.

Health workers in Arizona Warn state leaders The medical system is on the verge of “collapse”.

“There are more and more events where people are in cardiac arrest, decompensated, very ill, and even die in the waiting room.” Dr. Bradley Dreyfus, Emergency physician in Tucson, Arizona, Said Friday reporter.

Nationwide, the governor is mobilizing members of the National Guard to strengthen hospitals in need, including: Ohio..

“The hospital is full,” he said. Dr. Christine Englund, Infectious disease specialist at Cleveland Clinic. “Our intensive care unit is full, regular hospital beds are full, and many are COVIDs.”

Congested conditions lead to worse results

This latest surge in medical consequences can affect all Americans in need of medical care, whether COVID-19 or any other acute illness or injury.

“Everyone suffers when the hospital is tense,” says White.

Many U.S. hospitals were already debilitated before Omicron hit Under heavy Demand from patients infected with the delta mutation and seeking treatment for treatment postponed early in the pandemic. In addition, the shortage of health workers had reached critical levels. And now, a huge number of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals are testing positive and missing jobs, just as they are most needed.

Following the patterns found in other countries, there are early signs of Omicron in the United States Causes less serious illness From the delta variant. Some hospitals are aware that few patients require ICU-level care or mechanical ventilation. This is a welcome sign.

“But the problem is that [omicron is] The number of cases will be very high because it is very contagious. ” Dr. Sameer Kadri, National Institute of Health Clinical Center Infectious Diseases and Emergency Physicians.

Omicron’s extreme infectivity is When healthcare workers are depleted, hospitals can no longer provide patients with the same standard treatment as usual.

Kadori and his colleagues studied previous surges and found that a quarter of COVID-19 deaths could have been caused by overcrowding tensions. In the most overwhelming hospitals, where the demand for ventilator and other resource-intensive care was highest, the risk of death for COVID-19 patients doubled.

“What surprised me was the magnitude of the impact,” he said. study It was published last fall. “For these patients with few eyes and hands and needing precision care, that may mean the difference between life and death.”

“Currently, it is distributed every day.”

Much of this collapse of care unfolds invisible to most Americans, but front-line physicians like Dr. White in Pittsburgh witness deadly consequences every day.

“We received a call from an out-of-state hospital saying that we had a patient with acute renal failure who needed to undergo dialysis to replace renal function in order to survive,” says White. “We didn’t have a bed.”

There were no other hospitals. “The patient died in this kind of basic treatment we always offer to patients, that is, in hospitals that are not on dialysis,” he says.

“These are very realistic examples of patients who are currently dying in quality American hospitals because they cannot move to higher levels of care,” he adds. “And the same thing happens to patients with acute heart attacks and acute strokes.”

State agencies and hospitals have protocols on what to do if patient demand is at risk of exceeding the hospital’s capacity.

These protocols called “crisis standard treatment” Support triage And the patient, who is to take care, who will lead to decisions about whether not encounter disaster, epidemic, or to a large number of casualties accident. Crisis criteria help determine how to allocate equipment such as ventilators and drugs such as monoclonal antibodies to activate systems that transfer patients between hospitals within a state or region. In the current surge, some hospitals have activated crisis plans. Maryland..

Mr White said more healthcare professionals have followed suit, and much of the U.S. medical system is already de facto Crisis mode, whether or not they officially declared it.

“There is a big gap between reality and what is in public consciousness, and in my view, what many state governments are willing to admit,” he says. “The simple reality is that American medicine now has a daily distribution system.”

This distribution is done in many ways and may not be obvious to the general public, but the results are very realistic. Procedures and surgery canceled or delayed. And life-saving care that is simply not available to those who need it.

Not just for COVID patients

Several Epidemiologist predicts The total number of cases will peak this month. However, hospitalization with COVID-19 tends to follow the infection for about 2 weeks. This means a hospital. Need to braces for more patients Even after the infection peaked and began to decline in the coming weeks.

Surges affect all types of patients, not just those suffering from the coronavirus.one Research found If the patient was hospitalized during the COVID-19 surge, the overall mortality rate increased significantly.

In the 30 most severe conditions, including stroke, heart attack, and gastrointestinal bleeding, mortality increased by nearly 1% during the initial pandemic surge. This equates to one additional patient for every 100 patients dying from these conditions if the hospital did not cope with the patient surge. Dr. Amber Sabatini, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Washington.

“That’s a significant increase,” she says. “If the unit is stressed by COVID patients, they may not reach patients with heart failure or sepsis in a timely manner.”

Studies could not determine why these patients died, but Sabatini said the fatigue of health care workers caring for patients is often unsupported or accustomed to. It states that having no new staff can inevitably affect care.

“The impact on the staff caring for these patients, their cognitive and emotional burdens is very high,” she says. “Therefore, these subtle and difficult-to-test factors may contribute to the reason why patients are receiving poor quality of care or not getting as good results as patients. [normally] right. ”