With no end in sight to increasing caseloads, plummeting staff levels, and the hardships of a medical system struggling to provide care amid an unprecedented surge of the coronavirus, the United States is on track to break its own record for COVID-19 hospitalizations as early as Tuesday.
The 141,385 persons in U.S. hospitals with COVID-19 on Monday fell just short of the previous high of 142,273 established on January 14, 2021, when the epidemic was at its apex in this country.
The highly transmissible omicron variety, on the other hand, threatens to shatter that standard. If predictions of omicron’s spread are accurate – even the researchers who create them recognize that forecasting during a pandemic is tough – present numbers may look insignificant in a matter of weeks. When the peak is achieved, which is expected later this month, disease modelers forecast total hospitalizations in the 275,000 to 300,000 range.
Colorado, Oregon, Louisiana, Maryland, and Virginia had declared public health emergencies or allowed crisis standards of care as of Monday, allowing hospitals and ambulances to limit treatment if demand exceeds capacity.
Nurses and other hospital workers continued to become ill, leading to high nurse-to-patient ratios in several areas.
In an email, Russell Buhr, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, said, “Our systems and employees are under great strain, and I’m not sure how long we can continue it.”
Vaccines and boosters continue to protect against the omicron version of the virus, which appears to produce less severe disease and fewer deaths. Even while fewer patients are in the ICU than during last January’s peak, the sheer number of cases among unvaccinated persons, as well as breakthrough cases, was exerting pressure on intensive care units and hospital COVID wards. Deaths have also trailed increases in the number of infections by a few weeks during the pandemic. Those figures may also grow in the coming days.
The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation anticipated that hospitalizations would peak at 273,000 on January 25, with reported illnesses reaching 1.2 million per day by January 19.
According to Jeffrey Shaman, an infectious disease modeler and epidemiologist at Columbia University, COVID hospitalizations could reach 300,000 to 350,000 by January 27.
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