USA: patients in hospitals with omicron delay treatment of other diseases

Roger Strukhoff was being treated for intestinal bleeding at a hospital outside of Chicago when he suffered a mild heart attack. Normally, they would have sent the 67-year-old patient to the intensive care unit, but their capacity was overwhelmed by patients with COVID-19. The staff had to bring a heart monitor to his room and rapidly inject him with nitroglycerin and morphine.

“A doctor I know pretty well told me, ‘Roger, we’re going to have to improvise here,’” said Strukhoff, a resident of DeKalb, Illinois.

The wave of omicron in the American winter has not only filled hospitals with COVID-19 patients, but has also caused scares and headaches for those seeking treatment for other illnesses.

Less urgent interventions are on hold across the country, from cochlear implant surgeries to steroid injections for rheumatoid arthritis. Additionally, people with all kinds of health conditions have had to wait hours in emergency rooms.

Mat Gleason reported that he took his father Eugene Gleason, 92, to an emergency room in Los Angeles to receive a transfusion because he has a blood disorder. The procedure that usually lasts between seven and 10 hours this time was extended to 48 hours, Gleason said.

On Tuesday, there were almost 144,000 patients with COVID-19 in US hospitals, the highest number since records were kept for this disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). .

In a few states like New York and Connecticut, where the omicron wave first hit, hospital numbers are beginning to decline, but many other places are overwhelmed.

Hospitals say COVID-19 patients are not in as serious a condition as they were in the previous wave. Additionally, many of them, hospitalized for other illnesses, coincidentally test positive for the coronavirus.

Rick Pollack, CEO and president of the American Hospital Association, said the surge has broadly affected care for people with other health problems. Several factors are at play, he said: More people in hospitals and more health care workers have COVID-19, compounding understaffing that existed long before the pandemic.

As of Wednesday, 23% of hospitals across the country were reporting critical staffing shortages, Pollack said.

Many people are unwilling or unable to get care for symptoms that don’t seem urgent to them, Pollack explained. This leads to delays in diagnosing disorders such as diabetes or hypertension, which worsen if left untreated.