The number of patients being treated for coronavirus has dropped by more than 90% in more than two months, and some hospitals are leaving days without a single COVID-19 patient in the ICU for the first time since early 2020. Empty beds are expected to help U.S. hospitals retain depleted staff, treat patients without COVID-19 faster, and reduce inflated costs. More family members can visit loved ones. And doctors hope to see a correction in transparency in pediatric visits, annual checkups and cancer screenings. “We should all smile that the number of people currently in hospital with COVID, and the number of people in COVID intensive care units, is at this low point,” said University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi. . But, he said, the nation “paid a high price to get to this stage. “Many people got sick and many people died.” Hospitalizations are now at their lowest point since the summer of 2020, when integrated national data became available for the first time. The average number of people treated for COVID-19 last week nationwide fell to 11,860, the lowest since 2020 and a sharp drop from the 145,000 mark in mid-January. The previous low was 12,041 last June, before the delta variant took effect. The optimistic trend is also evident in the number of ICU patients who have dropped to less than 2,000, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. “We are starting to be able to take a breath,” said Dr. Jeffrey Weinstein, Patient Safety Officer for Kettering Health Hospital System in West Ohio. COVID-19 patients covered 30% of the nearly 1,600 Kettering Health hospital beds in January, Weinstein said. Kettering’s eight hospitals now receive an average of two to three COVID-19 admissions a day – and sometimes zero. And while Salemi agreed that this is a good time for an exhausted healthcare system to take a breather, he warned that the public health community needs to monitor omicron BA.2 variability. It is increasing hospital admissions in Britain and is now estimated to account for more than half of all infections in the United States. “We are probably detecting real infections now more than at any other time during the pandemic,” Salemi said. At least for now, many hospitals are recording low numbers. In California on Thursday, UC Davis Health wrote on Twitter that its intensive care unit had no COVID-19 patients for two consecutive days, for the first time in two years. “The first COVID-19 patient to arrive at our ICU did so in February 2020 and the unit treated at least one positive person every day since, for at least 761 consecutive days,” the hospital system said. Toby Marsh, head of nursing and patient care, said in a statement that he hoped the numbers were “indicative of a continuing change”. In Philadelphia, patients spend less time in the Temple University Health System because there are no more delays for MRIs, CT scans and lab tests, said Dr. Tony Reed, chief physician. The three Temple Health hospitals had six adult patients with COVID-19 on Thursday, probably the lowest number since March 2020, Reed said. During the micron increase, patients waited up to 22 hours for a routine MRI scan, which is normally done within 12 hours. Longer waits affected those who came with difficulty walking – and with a lot of pain – for example, due to a disc herniation that pinched their sciatic nerve. “No one wants to stay in the hospital one day longer than they should,” Reed said. Emptying the beds also helps patients in rural areas, said Jay Anderson, chief operating director of the Wexner Medical Center in Ohio, Columbus. During the increases, the hospital faced challenges by accepting people from community hospitals who needed increased care for brain tumors, advanced cancer and stroke. This weight has now been lifted. Visitors will also return in larger numbers from Tuesday. The State of Ohio will no longer restrict patients to two designated visitors who could only cross separately. “Patients are better treated when they have access to family and loved ones,” Anderson said. Doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists also take such a much-needed break in some areas. In Colorado, Dr. Michelle Barron said consistently low COVID-19 hospitalizations made staff smile, even when checking numbers to make sure they were really correct. “I had one of those moments like, oh, that’s amazing,” said Barron, medical director of infection prevention and control at UCHealth University in Colorado Hospital. “It feels unreal.” UCHealth has eased some restrictions, including the removal of test requirements for anyone entering a facility. And while that has put some stress on employees, Barron says the numbers have not increased. “I think some people have started taking vacations and not feeling guilty,” he said. “I had a spring break with my kids and it was a level of happiness where I went, oh my god, this is actually normal.” The microwave had stretched staff at work – but also at home, said Dr. Mike Hooper, chief physician for Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in southeastern Virginia. “It was stressful to be in the store… to visit your family,” Hooper said. “We all hope that a ‘return to normalcy’ will help people deal with the inherent stress of being part of a healthcare team.” But just because hospitals are down does not mean hospitals are empty, said Dr. Frank Johnson, chief physician for the St. Luke Health System in Idaho. Some measures – such as the use of a mask in some settings – will remain in effect. “I do not know when we can go back to the old practice of using masks in our clinical areas,” Johnson said. “We have seen some benefits from this in terms of reducing the number of other viral infections.” Meanwhile, the public health community is monitoring omicron BA.2 subtype. Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, said the increase in home tests means that more results are not included in official coronavirus counts. Therefore, wastewater monitoring will be the early warning signal you need to watch, he said. “BA.2 is here,” he said. “We do not need to look so far in the mirror to know that things can change very quickly. We saw what happened to the delta. We saw what happened to omicron … We do not want to wait until we see many people being treated before we take action. ”
Kruesi reported from Nashville, Tennessee. AP Medical author Carla K. Johnson in Washington state contributed to this report.
