Pa. Hospitals Contending With Worst Flu Season and COVID

(TNS) - Hospitals around the United are feeling pressure from multiple fronts: RSV cases among children have been up for months, overloading some pediatric units. The nation, including Pennsylvania, is in the midst of its worst flu season in years. Most recently, COVID-19 cases have begun to climb.

PennLive has been monitoring flu and COVID-19 counts and checking in whether hospitals weekly to discuss topics including the supply of available beds and emergency room waits.

Hospitals reported some hopeful news this week:

• Cases of RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, may have peaked. RSV often is the equivalent of a severe cold yet can sometimes be life-threatening for the very young and the very old. A national surge has been attributed to many children about two or younger having never been exposed before because of COVID-19 precautions. While central Pennsylvania health systems were still seeing many cases this week, several said numbers have dropped during the past week or so.
  
• Flu cases in Pennsylvania skyrocketed in late November and early December, with weekly counts topping the worst weeks of any flu season dating back at least eight years. The wave also came weeks earlier than usual; Pennsylvania cases normally accelerate following the Christmas and New Year holidays. However, the weekly count dropped last week. Still, the weekly count remained high, and the state health department said it was too early to know if cases have peaked.
  
• COVID-19 cases are rising, but remain far below the level of a year ago. As of Wednesday, Pennsylvania had a seven-day daily average of 2,768 new cases, nearly double the level of a month earlier, according to tracking by Johns Hopkins. A year earlier, the seven-day average stood at about 8,000 cases, with COVID-19 killing 110 people per day in Pennsylvania. On Wednesday, Pennsylvania had a seven-day average of 27 deaths per day, up from 19 a month earlier.
  

Overall, several central Pennsylvania hospitals said they’re not as stressed as they were a year ago. Still, they noted ongoing staffing shortages and also stressed the urgent care centers and emergency rooms are very busy. They urged people to be prepared for long waits.

“We are seeing flu hospitalizations coming down a bit from the post- Thanksgiving spike. As of Tuesday, there were 739 patients hospitalized statewide with the flu. That’s an 18 percent decrease from a week prior but still more than double before Thanksgiving,” said Liam Migdail, a spokesman for the Hospital and Health System Association of Pennsylvania.

Migdail said more than a quarter of Pennsylvania hospitals were at 90% or more of capacity for staffed beds, and 22% were at 90% or more of capacity for staffed intensive care beds.

Dr. Stanley Martin, a Geisinger infectious disease physician, said the level of flu hospitalizations throughout the system is “a moderate, but manageable number. It is higher than usual for this time of year.”

At York -based WellSpan Health, the flu surge has “led to an earlier seasonal increase in flu-related hospitalizations at WellSpan from about a dozen flu patients in the days prior to Thanksgiving to well over 50 flu patients in recent days. In terms of capacity, it’s important to note that our hospitals are not currently experiencing the type of capacity constraints seen during the January 2022 surge of COVID-19,” according to Dr. Mike Seim, the chief quality officer.

Seim noted WellSpan, which has six regular hospitals with ERs, is closely tracking the situation and is prepared to move patients to locations which have the needed resources and to expand the bed supply.

Seim urged people to use WellSpan’s online urgent care service, which is available at all hours, for non-emergency situations in order to reduce pressure on ERs.

Seim and others also urged people to get a flu shot to be fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19.

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