Far fewer patients were coming in with COVID related complaints and only 23 patients in my 8hrs sample got chest X-rays.
That's down from 40 patients/8hrs 2 weeks ago, and 50 patients/8hrs the week prior.
The crowd is thinning out.
/2
Of those patients that did get chest X-rays, 20 showed no evidence of a COVID pneumonia, and only 3 showed mild pneumonias which were not even definitively COVID pneumonias.
There were no moderate or severe pneumonias.
/3
What has changed?
Clearly the most important change is the prevalence of Omicron in the community. Omicron peaked early January in Ontario and has been dropping almost as quickly as it rose.
/4 globalnews.ca/news/8578162/o…
Unfortunately, this isn't the whole story.
Currently at my large urban general hospital we still have days where we are admitting more COVID-19 patients than we are discharging.
This leaves us with a sizable number of COVID patients requiring a high level of care.
/5
There is also a sad reality that while the Omicron wave is quieting down, many inpatients are still battling pneumonias some of which will progress in severity.
/6
Take home messages?
1. The drop in ER visits supports the waste water data showing that the Omicron wave is coming to an end.
2. It will take time to clear out the hospitals.
3. Omicron is still very dangerous, especially to the unvaccinated.
First, an observation. If you want to see what's actually going on in front of you, it's probably best to look through your eyes and not through your smart phone.
Social media tends to sensationalize the mundane and amplify voices with a particular point of view or agenda.
/2
The ER docs I talked to last night felt the department was manageable. Comments ranged from 'steady but not crazy', to 'we're pretty good, not too bad at all'.
This kind of optimism from an ER doc is reassuring.
Omicron is less severe. It tends to present as an upper respiratory tract infection as opposed to a pneumonia. The reason is related to the change in the spike protein and its ability to enter lung cells.
/2 upi.com/Top_News/US/20…
Does this mean that it's safe to be unvaccinated? Unfortunately not.
While the unvaccinated population will not have as many deaths per infection as in the Delta wave, they are at massively increased risk of serious disease and death compared to their vaccinated peers.
It's 5:45 in the morning and I'm coming up to the final few hours of my afternoon/evening/overnight shift. Things have changed since last week, and here's where we're at.
/1 #Omicron#COVID19@HRHospital
The first observation is that the ER team at my hospital are absolute heroes, and I don't say that lightly. They are taking the brunt of the Omicron wave both in terms of patient volume and exposure to the virus. They do all of this with calm professionalism.
/2
This takes me directly to the real crisis that's been brewing this wave. Due to the highly contagious nature of Omicron, we're slowly losing frontline staff. The stress for those remaining is not from fear of catching the virus, but fear of being stretched too thin.
Thanks for looping me into the conversation @DFisman.
Trepidation by those who lobbied for school closures and further lockdowns, that their interpretation of the data may not be a true reflection of the clinical burden of the #Omicron variant, is understandable.
So, let's review the situation locally, and see what the experts in the US and the UK are saying and doing.
/2
Currently, at my 722 bed urban hospital, we have 80 patients with COVID. Of those, 35 have been identified as having COVID unrelated to their diagnosis. That's 44% of patients and includes some in the ICU.
/3
My heart dropped when I opened my 1st case yesterday. It was a covid pneumonia and I thought to myself, here we go again. The next case that I opened was completely normal, and the next one, and the next one, and so on. Occasionally another COVID pneumonia would pop up.
/2
In all, I tallied no more than four suspected covid pneumonias. At the worst of the Delta wave, I could tally as many as 60 a shift.