Omicron surge is ‘unlike anything we have ever seen,’ expert says
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The latest expert’s claims in CNN make for adhering to covid-19 protocols across the globe with the region of the United States in particular.
An unprecedented spike in Covid-19 cases fueled by the fast-moving Omicron variant is crushing hospitals across the United States, with doctors describing packed emergency rooms as health experts implore New Year’s Eve revelers to keep parties small and outdoors to help avert an even worse surge.
“It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen, even at the peak of the prior surges of Covid,” Dr. James Phillips, who works in Washington, DC, said Wednesday, when the nation hit a new pandemic high of 300,886 average new daily cases over the prior week, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
“What we’re experiencing right now is an absolute overwhelming of the emergency departments” in Washington, Phillips, chief of disaster medicine at George Washington University Hospital, told CNN’s Jim Acosta.
It’s a scene playing out across the country as record case counts are reported from New Jersey and New York to Arkansas and Chicago, where hospital bed capacity also is a concern. In Arizona and New Mexico, federal medical personnel have deployed to provide Covid-19 surge support.
And in Georgia, six major health systems with recent 100% to 200% jumps in Covid-19 hospitalizations — with most patients unvaccinated — joined to publicly urge people to seek coronavirus testing elsewhere so their emergency rooms can focus on those with critical needs.
In Louisiana, Covid-19 hospitalizations have tripled in the past two weeks as a new record for cases was set, according to the state. Symptomatic patients have been showing up at Baton Rouge’s Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center to get tested, said the chief medical officer, Dr. Catherine O’Neal.
“We’re seeing an increase in admissions that is startling,” she told CNN on Wednesday.
Many patients O’Neal sees are unvaccinated, she said. They often have more severe illness with pneumonia and need to be intubated or need high-flow oxygen. Others who haven’t had a booster or are only partially vaccinated are suffering with a kind of flu-like illness and are “fragile,” she said.
“They’re older, they have heart failure, they have COPD, and they can’t handle Covid, even when they’re vaccinated,” O’Neal said. “Luckily, most of those people are turning around after a couple days and going home, which is a good thing.”
Nationwide, nearly 78% of ICU beds are in use, with 22% of those occupied by Covid-19 patients, according to data from the US Health and Human Services Department.
And pediatric hospital admission for Covid-19 are the highest they’ve ever been over the course of the pandemic. On average, 378 children were admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 on any given day over the week that ended December 28, according to data published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Department of Health and Human Services. That is well above the previous record average of 342 admitted children seen at the end of August and early September.
“We’re in the public health crisis of our lifetime,” Reiner told CNN’s Phil Mattingly on Thursday. And New York City’s Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration “should have been canceled,” in part because attendees might “pack the subways” to get there, he said. The event has been scaled back, with fewer revelers and everyone required to wear a mask.
The Omicron variant “is extraordinarily contagious, and if you are in a crowd now, and certainly if you’re unvaccinated, you are at great risk of contracting this virus,” Reiner told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday.
Meantime, the CDC is defending itself against criticism over its guidance this week that shortened to five days the recommended time those with Covid-19 should isolate if they’re asymptomatic. New research, combined with some infected people’s reluctance to isolate for 10 days, spurred some of the latest guidance, Walensky said Wednesday.