U.S. poised to break record 142,000 covid-19 hospitalizations

Disease modelers are predicting total hospitalizations in the 275,000 to 300,000 range when the peak is reached, probably later this month.As of Monday, Colorado, Oregon, Louisiana, Maryland and Virginia had declared public health emergencies or authorized crisis standards of care, which allow hospitals and ambulances to restrict treatment when they cannot meet demand.Three days in the deadliest month of the coronavirus pandemicNurses and other hospital staff continued to fall sick themselves, raising nurse to patient ratios in some places to high levels.“Our systems and personnel are under extreme strain and I’m not sure how long we can sustain it,” Russell Buhr, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, said in an email.The omicron variant of the virus still appears to cause less severe illness and fewer deaths, and vaccines and boosters are holding up as bulwarks against both. While the absolute percentage of patients requiring ICU treatment being admitted may be lower, the total number of ICU patients is greater.”Under Colorado’s crisis standards of care, emergency crews were told to consider not transporting to hospitals patients under the age of 60 who are not showing severe symptoms and who do not have a high-risk medical history.What to know about the omicron variant of the coronavirusOregon’s interim crisis guidelines, released Friday, call for hospitals coping with overwhelming patient demand to establish triage teams to score each patient based on likelihood of survival with treatment, rather than age or quality of life.At University Hospital in Newark, about 61 percent of covid patients did not have coronavirus as their primary diagnosis, meaning they arrived seeking care for another reason but tested positive when checked for covid.The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, which runs four public hospitals, reported last week that about two-thirds of its 150 covid patients were incidental cases, up from about 20 percent in last winter’s peak.Overall the daily average of new infections stood at more than 714,600 Monday, according to data tracked by The Washington Post, up 74 percent from a week ago.