Hospitals say they’re still dealing with the impacts of Covid-19 despite progress being made toward the virus.
The University of Rochester Medical Center doctors are seeing two to five new patients admitted each day with the virus, many of whom are not vaccinated.
“This has led to us continuing to have about 70 patients in the hospital that were admitted with COVID,” Chief Medical Officer Dr. Michael Apostolakos said.
“At our peak, we had about 300 patients, 400 as a system, and right now as a system, we have about 100 COVID patients, 70 at Strong, and that still represents about 10% of our inpatient beds,” Apostolakos said.
The average age of patients being hospitalized has dropped to 40-60, and continuous hospitalization for the virus is keeping health systems stressed.
Apostolakos added that staff are working at a high level and have been for 18 months, resulting in added stress when worrying already about their families and loved ones.
Dr. Robert Mayo, chief medical officer for Rochester Regional Health added that his system is seeing much of the same things, with about 55 patients admitted for Covid-19 right now, some very ill.
“It really is unvaccinated folks,” Dr. Mayo said. “We’re aware of some breakthrough infections of people who were vaccinated and later tested positive, but those patients are almost invariably asymptomatic or very, very mild symptoms, and the COVID positivity is discovered on routine testing.”
This underscores the importance of what the vaccine can do for the situation.
As of Wednesday, Dr. Apostolakos said about 80% of URMC staff are vaccinated. Mayo says more than 70% of RRH staff are vaccinated.
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