COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States are poised to hit a new high as early as Friday, according to a Reuters tally, surpassing the record set in January of last year as the highly contagious Omicron variant fuels a surge in infections.
Hospitalizations have increased steadily since late December as Omicron quickly overtook Delta as the dominant coronavirus variant in the United States, although experts say Omicron will likely prove less deadly than prior iterations.
Health officials have nevertheless warned that the sheer number of infections caused by Omicron was placing a strain on hospitals, some of which are struggling to keep up with the influx of patients because their own workers are out sick.
“It’s sort of like medical throughput gridlock,” Dr. Peter Dillon, the chief clinical officer at Penn State Health in Pennsylvania, said in an interview. “There (are) so many forces now contributing to the challenges and I think there’s an element, I don’t want to say despair, but of fatigue.”
The United States reported 662,000 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, the fourth highest daily U.S. total, just three days after a record of nearly 1 million cases was hit, according to the Reuters tally.
U.S. COVID hospitalizations approached 123,000, appearing poised to top the record above 132,000, according to the tally. Deaths, a lagging indicator, remain fairly steady at about 1,400 a day, well below last year’s peak.
Hospitalization data, however, often does not differentiate between people admitted for COVID-19 and so-called incidental cases involving people who were admitted for other reasons and were found to be infected during routine testing.
In New York 42% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 were in the incidental category, Governor Kathy Hochul told a briefing on Friday, a sign of how the data may not be giving the clearest picture of Omicron’s impact in terms of severe disease.
While hospitalizations continue to rise in New York, Hochul and other state officials expressed optimism that the worst of the Omicron wave could pass in the coming days.
“We need a couple more days to be able to tell that it has peaked,” said Dr. Mary Bassett, New York’s acting Health Commissioner. “I think that we can expect a difficult January but that things should be much better by February.”
STAFF EXHAUSTION
Rising cases have forced hospital systems in nearly half of U.S. states to postpone elective surgeries, a reflection of the strain on the healthcare sector, which lost about 3,100 workers according to Friday’s U.S. monthly employment report.
Some doctors and nurses expressed frustration at the surge among unvaccinated patients, saying they could not understand why someone would ignore a doctor’s advice to get vaccinated but then seek a medical professional’s help once sick with COVID-19.
“A lot of this is unnecessary death,” said Lynne Kokoczka, a clinical nurse specialist in an intensive care unit at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio shortly after she helped remove a dead COVID-19 patient from the ward.
Ninety percent of the patients in intensive care on mechanical ventilation at the Cleveland Clinic are unvaccinated, said Dr. Hassan Khouli, chairman for the department of critical care medicine at the academic medical center.
“This is really taking a toll on our teams,” Khouli said. “Burnout is a major concern.”
While many school systems have vowed to continue in-person instruction, some have faced closures as cases rise. In Chicago – the third-largest U.S. public school system – schools were closed for a third day on Friday amid a teacher walkout over COVID-19 protections.
Officials continue to press vaccinations as the best protection against serious illness, although federal mandates requiring them have become politically contentious.
In a closely watched legal test of mandates, conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices on Friday questioned President Joe Biden’s vaccine-or-testing requirement for large businesses but appeared more receptive to a mandate for healthcare facilities at a time of surging COVID-19 infections.
U.S. staff of Citigroup Inc who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 14 will be placed on unpaid leave and fired at the end of the month unless they are granted a vaccine exemption, a source told Reuters on Friday.
Hochul said New York would become the first state to mandate a booster shot for healthcare workers, pending approval from a state health planning council. She said the booster was needed to keep nurses healthy and able to work.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Lisa Shumaker, Maria Caspani, Ankur Banerjee, Shannon Stapleton, Andrew Hay and Nathan Layne; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot)
VANCOUVER – Mayors and other leaders from several British Columbia communities say the provincial and federal governments need to take “immediate action” to tackle mental health and public safety issues that have reached crisis levels.
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim says it’s become “abundantly clear” that mental health and addiction issues and public safety have caused crises that are “gripping” Vancouver, and he and other politicians, First Nations leaders and law enforcement officials are pleading for federal and provincial help.
In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier David Eby, mayors say there are “three critical fronts” that require action including “mandatory care” for people with severe mental health and addiction issues.
The letter says senior governments also need to bring in “meaningful bail reform” for repeat offenders, and the federal government must improve policing at Metro Vancouver ports to stop illicit drugs from coming in and stolen vehicles from being exported.
Sim says the “current system” has failed British Columbians, and the number of people dealing with severe mental health and addiction issues due to lack of proper care has “reached a critical point.”
Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer says repeat violent offenders are too often released on bail due to a “revolving door of justice,” and a new approach is needed to deal with mentally ill people who “pose a serious and immediate danger to themselves and others.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
