The wave of Covid seems different in hospitals than it did in the last one.
Medical personnel are exhausted as they face the Omicron variant and are contracting the virus themselves. The number of patients entering hospitals with the variant is surging to staggering levels, filling up badly needed beds, delaying non emergency procedures, and increasing the risk that vulnerable uninfected patients will catch the virus.
In Omicron hot spots from New York to Florida to Texas, a smaller proportion of patients are landing in intensive care units or requiring mechanical ventilation. Roughly 50 to 65 percent of admissions in some New York hospitals are for other ailments and then test positive for the virus.
The number of hospitalizations is increasing, according to Dr. Rahul Sharma, emergency physician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. The severity of the disease is different from previous waves. Most of the patients that come to the emergency department that test positive are actually being discharged.
The shift in hospital patterns matches the data that suggests Omicron may be a variant with milder effects than those that have come before, less prone to cause serious disease in the lungs. The lower proportion of severe cases is happening because Omicron is infecting more people who have some prior immunity. Doctors said that most of the Omicron patients are unvaccinated.
Hospitals are facing staff shortages. In New York City, hospitalizations have gone up more than last winter. The state of Maryland had more hospitalized Covid-19 patients at that time than at any previous point during the Pandemic, according to Governor Larry Hogan.
The director of the emergency department at the school of medicine said that they were in a state of crushed mode.
The number of I.C.U. patients is a lagging indicator and is likely to rise in the coming weeks, experts said. Some states are still struggling under the burden of hospitalizations from Delta, a previous version of the virus that may be more virulent. Hospitals are often unaware of which patients are carrying a variant of the disease.
Several reports suggest that Omicron is a different type of foe. The challenges hospitals face are more about staffing and spreading the disease than about having enough equipment, doctors said.
Ryan Maves, an infectious disease and critical care physician at the Wake Forest School of Medicine, said that they were worried about running out of ventilators early on in the Pandemic. The real limitations are physical bed space and staffing.
The experts stressed that the findings should be interpreted with caution after reports emerged that hospitals in South Africa were handling relatively few Omicron cases. South Africa has a relatively young population and a large proportion of them have been affected by previous waves.
There is more evidence that people who have been exposed to Omicron in recent weeks seem to be better off than people who have been exposed before.
The image is.
There was an empty waiting room outside of the Covid I.C.U. The number of I.C.U. patients is down, but it is not a good indicator.
A government report released last week states that people with Omicron were less likely to need hospital care and more likely to be admitted to the hospital from the emergency room. Reports from Canada suggest a similar pattern.
A new report from the Houston Methodist health care system, which has been analyzing the vast majority of viral samples from its patients since February 2020, found the same thing.
The new variant was causing more than 90 percent of new Covid cases at Houston Methodist. Researchers compared 1,313 patients with Omicron who had been diagnosed by that date to Houston Methodist patients who had been diagnosed with the Delta or Alpha variant.
It takes time for the worst outcomes to manifest, and the numbers of Omicron cases examined in Houston are small. Less than 15 percent of the early Omicron patients were hospitalized, compared with 43 percent of the Delta patients and 55 percent of the Alpha patients, according to the study.
Omicron patients were less likely to require mechanical ventilation and had shorter hospital stays than those with the other variant.
According to Dr. James Musser, the chair of pathology and genomic medicine at Houston Methodist, the Omicron cases are less severe. That is good news for our patients.
The Omicron patients were younger and more likely to be vaccine recipients than those with previous versions.
Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University in Atlanta, said that the reports are encouraging, but that there is not yet enough data to draw conclusions about Omicron's severity.
Dr. Dean said there wasn't enough time. It took months for the studies to be published.
In New York City, cases have been rising since December and are now accounted for by Omicron. I.C.U. admissions have been rising slowly.
At New York University's Langone Health, around 65 percent of patients admitted with Covid were found to have the virus, and their hospitalizations were not primarily because of the illness. Half of the admissions at NewYork-Presbyterian were not Covid.
Hospitals in other cities have reported higher rates of infections. 53 percent of the patients with Covid were admitted to the hospital for other reasons. According to Dr. Kelen, at least 20 percent of patients seeking treatment for non-covid complaints are testing positive for infections.
Card 1 of 3.
The global surge. The Omicron variant of the coronaviruses is less severe than earlier waves, and the last days of the year brought the good news. Governments are focusing more on expanding vaccination than limiting the spread.
Return to work. The recent surge has led to a reversal of workplace policies at some companies. Some employees are being told to stay home for just days or hours before their return.
People who are hospitalized for other health problems can still be at risk for infections. The high number of hospitalized patients with Covid presents an additional challenge.
Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease specialist at the Emory University School of Medicine, said that they still need to put them in isolation. They need to be treated as patients who could potentially transmit Covid in the hospital. You really have a problem if you have less staff.
The admissions to NYU Langone's intensive care are lower than they were in January. The number of patients requiring critical care at Mount Sinai South Nassau is lower than it has been in the past, but the sheer number of cases means that more people are getting very sick.
The chief of infectious diseases and epidemiologist at the hospital said that the illness is less severe. We haven't seen deaths from Covid in a long time. We haven't had patients in the I.C.U. on ventilators in a long time.
The image is.
The emergency department at Covenant healthcare has nurses in it. Increased numbers of hospitalizations have put further stress on hospitals already struggling with staffing shortages.
The majority of people who are going into I.C.U.s are unvaccinated or have not been dosed. The cases can still be as severe as before, even if you make it into I.C.U.s.
Hospitals have been put under stress by the increase in hospitalizations.
Hospitals were struggling with staffing shortages before Omicron came along. Even when hospital beds are available, an exodus of health care professionals has made it more difficult to deliver care.
The dean of Brown University's School of Public Health said there was no capacity. There is not enough staff for the beds.
The rise in hospitalized Covid cases has happened alongside a rise in hospitalizations for other conditions. People without Covid avoided hospitals at the peak of the Pandemic in 2020.
People are not scared to go to the hospitals. Our volumes in our E.R.s are almost back to normal. Capacity becomes an increased challenge because we are busy.
Hospitals are considering reducing surgeries because of staff shortages.
The University of Florida Health Shands hospital system will never crowd out strokes or heart attacks. If this keeps going the way it is, hospitals will have to consider slowing down their planned admissions.
Dr. del Rio said that they were hoping not to cancel the surgeries, but that they had considered it. Some of the surgeries are canceling themselves because people are positive for Covid.
It has been about six weeks since the world first learned about Omicron, and hospital personnel are still waiting nervously to see how the coming weeks unfold.
Most of the 630 patients with the virus at Houston Methodist are likely to have Omicron, according to Dr. Musser. The number of new cases is still rising, but it is still below the system's peak in which there were between 850 and 900 patients with the virus at once.
He asked how high it would go. Can't tell you. Don't know. We are all watching it very closely.
Gina contributed to the report.
