A medical worker in PPE works with a patient with Covid-19 in a negative pressure room in the intensive care unit at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center. The hospital doesn't have many beds left because it is overflowing with patients.
Hospitals nationwide are once again under the strain of the COVID-19 cases as the omicron wave crashes into health care systems that are already critically short-staffed and exhausted from previous waves of the Pandemic.
The current situation is forcing states and hospitals to declare emergencies, deploy the National Guard, delay or cancel procedures, institute crisis standards of care, and allow health providers to stay at work even if they themselves are positive for COVID-19 because there is no one available to take their place. Some doctors are worried that the omicron wave will cause some systems to collapse.
Craig Spencer, an emergency medicine physician and director of global health in emergency medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that the comforting news that this variant generally causes milder disease overlooks the unfolding tragedy happening on the front lines
There are effective treatment plans for COVID-19, unlike this time last year. The situation is bleak for health workers and hospitals because these tools are not enough to slow the rapid influx of patients.
There are numbers and projections.
The seven-day average of daily COVID-19 cases has reached a new high. In the course of two weeks, daily hospitalizations have increased by 83 percent. The all-time record for the number of hospitalizations in a single day in the Pandemic was set in January of last year.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 77 percent of hospital beds are occupied and 78 percent of intensive care units are full. The department's data can have lags, showing hospital usages that may be one to two weeks behind. A projection of lagging HHS hospital data that suggests hospital beds are only 78 percent full suggests that Maryland's hospitals may be hitting capacity.
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Jeremy Faust quoted a Maryland physician colleague as saying that the projection was correct.
The situation in Maryland is horrendous. The state has been out for a couple of weeks. Hospitals are operating under a crisis standard of care. Baltimore county started transporting people in fire trucks last week because of the increased taxes on ambulance services. This is not normal and absurd. There are reports of people waiting for the fire fighters to leave before the ambulance arrives. They wait hours for a bed when they get to the hospital. Transfer centers laugh when they hear the system is backlogged. It is mind incomprehensible that this has not been national news.
Strained systems.
There is still a crush of patients and some of them are suffering the worst of the disease. The county board in Kansas issued a local emergency last Friday after a hospital ran out of ventilators. Omicron is reaching vulnerable populations that end up needing hospital care after omicron causes a previous condition, such as diabetes. Hospitals are seeing high levels of seasonal flu and other conditions.
The surge of patients is coming at a time when hospitals are already critically understaffed and providers are facing extreme burnout.
The state of Virginia saw a record number of hospitalizations last week and the governor issued a limited state of emergency to try to ease the strain. The order allows hospitals to increase their bed capacity and increase staffing through a number of technical changes, such as adding flexibility for active out-of-state providers to practice in the state and expanding the ability of physician assistants to provide care.
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Hospitals and health care workers are exhausted, and they are facing increasing numbers of patients, affecting their ability to provide care, according to Gov. Northam. Medical professionals will be given more flexibility to care for people as a result of these steps. Everyone can help our hospitals and their staff by getting vaccinations.
Easing the strain.
Maryland issued a similar state of emergency last week to help the state's health care facilities.
"The next four to six weeks will be the most challenging of the entire epidemic," Hogan said in a statement last week. We are taking all of the emergency actions today to keep our hospitals open, to keep our kids in school, and to keep Maryland open for business, and we will continue to take whatever actions are necessary in the very difficult days and weeks ahead."
The Maryland National Guard was activated to assist state and local health officials. The National Guard has been called in by at least 10 states to help with the response to the omicron cases. Massachusetts deployed National Guard members to hospitals in late December. The main hospital in central Massachusetts is currently operating at 115 percent, according to a January 9 report by CNN.
The CEO of the hospital and an emergency physician told the outlet that it was the perfect storm for the emergency department.
Some hospitals in Rhode Island and Arizona allow medical providers to stay at work even if they are sick with COVID-19.
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