While all eyes are on the new and little-understood omicron variant, the delta form of the coronavirus isn’t finished wreaking havoc in the US, sending record numbers of patients to the hospital in some states, especially in the Midwest and New England. Omicron is a spark that’s on the horizon. Delta variant is the fire that’s here today, director of the state Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Maine Dr Nirav Shah told the Associated Press, where a record 334 people were in the hospital with COVID-19 as of midweek.
The US recorded its first known omicron infection on Wednesday, in a fully vaccinated person who had returned to California from South Africa, where the variant was first identified just over a week ago. And a second US case was confirmed Thursday in Minnesota, involving a vaccinated man who had been in New York City. That would suggest the variant has begun to spread within the country.
But there is much that is unknown about omicron, including whether it is more contagious than previous versions, makes people sicker or more easily thwarts the vaccine or breaks through the immunity that people get from a bout of COVID-19. For now, the extra-contagious delta variant accounts for practically all cases in the US and continues to inflict misery at a time when many hospitals are struggling with shortages of nurses and a backlog of patients undergoing procedures that had been put off early in the pandemic.
The fear is that omicron will foist even more patients, and perhaps sicker ones, onto hospitals. For me, it’s really just, I can’t imagine,” Dr Natasha Bhuyan, a family physician in Phoenix told the Associated Press. “Are we going to see another surge in cases that’s even higher than what we’re seeing now? What will that do to our health system? What will that do to our hospitals? Two years into the outbreak, COVID-19 has killed over 780,000 Americans, and deaths are running at about 900 per day.
COVID-19 cases and deaths in the US have dropped by about half since the delta peak in August and September, but at about 86,000 new infections per day, the numbers are still worrisomely high, especially heading into the holidays, when people travel and gather with family. With the onset of cold weather sending more people indoors, hospitals are feeling the strain.
Delta is not subsiding, said Dr. Andre Kalil, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Nebraska on Tuesday reported 555 people in the hospital with COVID-19 the highest number since last December, when the vaccine rollout was just beginning. Vermont recorded its highest total since the start of the pandemic: 84. New Hampshire, once an early vaccination leader, is now second only to Michigan in the most new cases per capita over the past two weeks.
In Minnesota, which ranks third for most new cases per capita, the Pentagon sent medical teams last month to two major hospitals to relieve doctors and nurses swamped by COVID-19 patients. This fourth wave, I can pretty clearly state, has hit Minnesota harder than any of the previous ones, said Dr. Timothy Johnson, president of the Minnesota chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
He said hospitals are struggling because of a combination of a lack of nurses, fatigue and patients undergoing treatments that had to be postponed earlier in the crisis. Now those chickens are coming home to roost a little bit, he said. At Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, where one of the military medical teams was sent, the number of COVID-19 patients has doubled since September, although it remains below pandemic highs, spokeswoman Christine Hill said.
And it’s concerning with the holidays coming up, she said. Dr. Pauline Park, who takes care of critically ill patients at the University of Michigan Health in Ann Arbor, called the latest surge heartbreaking. One COVID-19 patient, a woman in her 20s, died the week of Thanksgiving. Another, a mother with young children, is on a machine built to take over for her lungs.
Arizona, where students in dozens of classrooms have been forced into quarantine, reported over 3,100 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday, numbers similar to the disastrous summer of 2020. Hospital bed space has fallen to pandemic lows. Bhuyan said a patient of hers with a blood clot in a lung was discharged instead of being admitted. Other patients are waiting hours in the emergency room.
It’s just hard because it does feel like that we are actually going backwards in time, even though we have these vaccines, which are such a great weapon for us, she said.
US’ New Omicron Plan
President Joe Biden has laid out his strategy amid the Omicron emergence. The president warned in no uncertain terms that infections will rise this winter. “We’re going to fight this variant with science and speed, not chaos and confusion,” he said, speaking at the National Institutes of Health medical research facility in Maryland.
New York has found five cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant, its governor said, becoming the fourth US state to detect the variant and bringing the total number of infections in the country to eight.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul told a news conference that one of the cases involved a 67-year-old Long Island woman with mild symptoms who had recently returned from South Africa. The woman had some vaccination history but it was not yet known how many doses she had received. Further information was not yet available on the other four people, all New York City residents, Hochul said.
The other US states that have found Omicron cases are California, Colorado and Minnesota, one in each state. In all three cases, the patients were fully vaccinated and developed mild symptoms. In California and Colorado, the patients had recently returned from trips to southern Africa and had not gotten booster doses. The case in Minnesota is the first known community transmission within the United States.
The patient in Minnesota had recently travelled to New York City for an anime convention, prompting the city to launch contact tracing to try to contain the spread. “We are aware of a case of the Omicron variant identified in Minnesota that is associated with travel to a conference in New York City, and we should assume there is community spread of the variant in our city,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said ahead of Hochul’s announcement.
Under Biden’s plan, the United States will require inbound international passengers to be tested for COVID-19 within one day of departure, regardless of vaccination status. Mask requirements on airplanes, trains and public transportation vehicles will be extended to March 18.
The US government will require private health insurers to reimburse their 150 million customers for 100% of the cost of over-the-counter, at-home COVID-19 tests, administration officials said, and make 50 million more tests available free through rural clinics and health centers for the uninsured. Less than 60% of the US population, or 196 million people, have been fully vaccinated, one of the lowest rates among wealthy nations.
With inputs from the Associated Press, Reuters.
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