After coming down with Covid this month, Perez had never been hospitalized for her asthma.
She started having difficulty breathing after taking her usual medication. She spent most of a week at a hospital in Pennsylvania when most of the Covid patients had contracted the Omicron variant.
She was frightened by the episode. She said that she will probably be scared for the rest of her life because doctors were able to get her asthma under control. Ms. Perez said she had spent the last two years working from home and not going out because she was afraid of contracting the disease. She hasn't gotten a booster shot yet.
People like Ms. Perez are at higher risk for serious illness from Covid because of their underlying medical conditions. More than half of American adults have at least one underlying chronic condition, and for many of them, the Omicron wave hasn't been as mild as it has been for the larger, healthier populations around the world.
Omicron has caused a lower rate of death and illness in the U.S. among people who have received booster shots. The variant's high transmissibility led to record-setting case counts that resulted in high hospitalizations.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Wednesday that the surge was still imposing a heavy burden.
In the last few weeks, the rate of hospitalization has fallen in some regions, where Omicron first arrived. According to a recent report from researchers at the C.D.C., the number of Omicron infections has led to higher admissions than in the past. Hospitals in the country still average about 150,000 admissions a day, including many rural regions where facilities are stretched thin.
Craig Thompson is the chief executive of Golden Valley Memorial healthcare, a small rural hospital in Clinton, Mo. The Covid, heart attack and stroke patients that the hospital would typically transfer to larger facilities were boarded in the emergency room for days. Staff members made hundreds of calls to get beds for patients, sometimes up to 400 miles away.
Public health experts say that most of the people hospitalized with severe illness are unvaccinated. Some people who have underlying conditions and who were vaccine-eligible have been at risk for more serious illness caused by the virus, and for the infection potentially worsening their existing diseases, increasing their chances of hospitalization.
While they may not be hospitalized for respiratory illnesses, we are seeing some of other conditions in individuals who are vulnerable. In some cases, patients were dehydrated from the effects of a virus and had to be hospitalized.
It is not always clear what role Omicron plays, but there is a plausible biological explanation for a virus causing patients to develop systemic issues.
More than two-thirds of the patients in the system had a primary diagnosis of Covid, but an additional 15 to 20 percent were diagnosed with other illnesses.
It isn't an "incidental diagnosis" according to a senior vice president of medical and academic affairs at the University Health Network.
Dr. Nicholas Kman is an emergency physician at the Ohio State University Wexner. Ms. Perez is coming in with high blood sugar levels or hypertension because she had successfully been managing her conditions.
transplant or cancer patients are not able to mount a sufficient immune response to protect themselves from serious disease when they become infections.
Doctors say these admissions have had a negative effect on hospitals.
Hospitals at maximum capacity have been dealing with nationwide shortages of basic supplies that are needed to care for patients with complicated conditions, including IV bags, small needles, and plastic tubes to take blood samples.
Frontline nurses say juggling unfamiliar products or adjusting to workarounds makes their jobs even more difficult.
The rippling effect of the caseloads has been more pronounced in this wave. Staffing shortages at nursing homes and clinics have made it difficult for patients with positive coronaviruses to be discharged from the hospital. Some facilities don't accept Covid patients and others don't have any openings.
The implications of having Covid for placement is putting a lot of stress on the health care system.
pregnant women are among patients who have become seriously ill. According to her mother, Jenny Clay, Alex was diagnosed with Covid when she gave birth to a baby in January. Omicron made up almost all of the Covid cases in Texas and surrounding states that week.
Her throat felt like it had been broken and her chills were hard to shake. Her firstborn child, Beau, became the consuming care of her symptoms.
Ms. Clay said that staff members noticed that Ms. Chandler was breathing heavily after five days of follow-up care for her son. Her oxygen saturation was 76 percent, much lower than the typical 95 to 100 percent.
Belsie Gonzalez, a C.D.C. spokeswoman, said that pregnant women have higher heart rates, lower lung capacity and immune system changes. According to the study, nearly all of the pregnant women admitted to critical care in Europe were unvaccinated.
Her mother said that she was admitted to the hospital on January 14 and developed pneumonia and a pneumothorax. She was put on a ventilator the following morning and is currently in the intensive care unit at AdventHealth Central Texas.
Ms. Clay helps care for her grandson. She noticed that he has his mother's eyes and that he eats well and doesn't cry.
Ms. Clay said that his mom should be here and sharing this with her. She planned to share the first days with her daughter. Ms. Clay said that her daughter showed some signs of progress, but then lost her footing.
Some people who have trouble with their immune response are hospitalized in this wave. The chief medical officer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston said the high number of infections had led to increased hospitalizations for cancer.
He said the new treatments were in short supply. The patients from previous waves are similar to those who are getting very sick.
Some of the patients seen by Dr. Natalia Solenkova, an intensive care physician who works at hospitals in Florida and Tennessee, are organ transplant recipients who she said did what they were supposed to do by getting vaccines and booster shots. They are vulnerable to Covid because they are on immune-suppressing drugs that keep their bodies from rejecting a donor organ.
Many are on life support and are dying.
The last day of December was when Omicron was responsible for 95 percent of the cases in Florida. She had survived a difficult eight-day hospitalization with pneumonia in 2011 and feared that any residual damage would make her susceptible to a severe case.
She was admitted to a hospital with a blood oxygen level of just below 80. Her oxygen levels have continued to fall despite her brief hospital stay. She was diagnosed with a disease.
She doesn't like the idea of the Omicron variant being mild. She joked with a friend that it was hot and spicy.
Dr. Mark Lewis, a cancer specialist at Intermountain healthcare in Salt Lake City, said he had found that Omicron presents in patients as a completely different beast.
Ms. Clay said that her daughter's condition was precarious, a sign that Omicron is not always mild, as she sees it as a symptom of those fatigued by the lengthy Pandemic.
Ms. Clay said that it was not time to be done.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
