How serious will flu and Covid get this winter? Hospitals prepare for rough season.

Hospitals across the country are gearing up for the third winter due to Covid. The first winter is also expected to include high levels of influenza and other respiratory illnesses that have quietly simmered in the background for the past two years.

Flu cases are already on the rise in parts of the United States, according to the WHO. Centers for Disease Control and PreventionPediatricians have also seen an increase in the number of children infected with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). enterovirus.

and, Covid downtrendtens of thousands of new cases are diagnosed every day.

The convergence of the virus has hit the healthcare system as it has been forced to consider staffing shortages exacerbated during the pandemic.

“If you go around the country Dr. Carlos Del Rio, Executive Associate Dean of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta and Grady Health System, said:

Health worker turnover is 23% higher than at the start of the pandemic, reflecting worker turnover trends across the country. Health system trackeris an effort by the nonprofit Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation to monitor the performance of the U.S. healthcare system.

“Nurses are on the front lines and some of them burned out and quitsaid Dr. James McDivitt, executive vice president and clinical director at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “

Dr. Bernard Cummins, medical director of infection prevention at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, points to a similar “mass drain” of health care workers retiring early or moving into a completely different profession. increase.

Now, he said, “I’m always having a hard time recruiting new people.”

Understaffing means there’s little room to accommodate surges in patients, whether it’s Covid, flu, or other illnesses.

“There is no excess capacity in hospitals,” Del Rio said. “Anything that increases patient numbers is tipping the scale.”

Despite staffing shortages, hospital leaders applaud health workers for being able to keep their course and prepare for the next phase of the epidemic.

Morale is “actually pretty good,” McDeavitt said. “We were moving forward from the early days of the pandemic thinking that we could get sick and die.”

“I think those worries have been alleviated,” McDeavitt said. “We now know how to handle it.”

Where are we now?

Covid case reports have been steadily declining since early August. As of Oct. 6, based on a seven-day average, his average number of new infections per day was 44,743, the lowest since April.

Covid-related hospitalizations also continue to decline. As of Oct. 5, the average daily number of beds occupied by Covid patients was 27,161, the lowest since June.

However, Covid cases are expected to increase as the cold weather sets in and people gather more and more indoors.

Recent analysis Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, predict that the average daily number of Covid cases nationwide will increase by more than 10% in the coming weeks.

Matthew Vinicker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic, said: “Most of them are infections that lead to mild to moderate illness.”

How well do Covid boosters work?

This prediction reflects what is known so far about how the latest Covid vaccine works. , has been shown to keep infected people out of hospitals and prevent them from dying throughout pandemics.

It is very likely that the flu will be raging this winter.

Dr. Dan Uslan, UCLA Health

“The extent to which hospitalizations and deaths increase depends on how well people get up to date on vaccines,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University’s School of Public Health, who believes that weaker immune systems are more common. says.

The majority of Covid cases currently circulating are BA.5, the Omicron subspecies. The latest version of the Covid vaccine targets BA.5, but since its debut in September, less than 4% of people The Extra Shot subject received it.

of federal fund recently predicted that over 745,000 Covid-related hospitalizations and over 75,000 such deaths could be avoided if more people received the bivalent vaccine.

The US also sees the beginning of what is expected to be the first rough flu season in a year. Although overall numbers remain low, CDC Last week, it reported an increase in positive flu tests.

Dr. Dan Uslan, Co-Chief Infection Prevention Officer, University of California, Los Angeles, said:

What’s happening in Australia could be a preview: The country is going through its worst flu season in at least five years. Department of Health and Aged Care.

“The data from the southern hemisphere are not good,” said Vinicker of the Mayo Clinic. “Precautionary measures must be increased,” including masking and physical distancing.

There are already signs that more viruses are spreading than in recent years.

pediatrician Dr. Sarah Combs, an emergency physician at Children’s National in Washington, D.C., says she’s starting to see “a lot of people with severe respiratory illness.”

“We see more and more children suffering from breathing problems associated with what is commonly called colds and stuffy noses,” Combs said. children who do not have other chronic lung diseases.

“They come in with a cold and within 24 hours they’re actually having trouble breathing,” she said.

The CDC recommends annual flu vaccinations for everyone 6 months and older. According to the CDC, any child under the age of 9 who has never had her flu vaccine should get her two doses at least four weeks apart this year.

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