“While the number of hospital admissions may be less, that doesn’t mean zero. There are many places in the country where the number of hospital admissions is now increasing,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told DailyExpertNews’s Poppy Harlow Friday.
Twelve states have seen at least a 10% increase in Covid-19 hospitalizations in the past week compared to the previous one, HHS data shows. That comes against a backdrop of a 48% rise in Covid-19 cases since last week, bringing the U.S. average for new daily cases to 182,682, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Covid-19 cases in Los Angeles County have nearly tripled in the past week, to 9,998 new cases for its roughly 10 million residents, public health data shows. However, hospital admissions have remained stable.
New York state broke its own daily record of Covid-19 cases on Friday, when it reported 44,431 new cases — a 14% increase from Thursday.
“This is no surprise,” said New York Governor Kathy Hochul. “This is a very, very contagious variant.”
Hospital admissions in the state are also increasing, but at a slower rate. Friday data showed 4,744 New Yorkers received Covid-19 treatment in hospitals, a 4.6% increase from Thursday.
Thousands of Christmas Day flights cancelled
JetBlue Airways also canceled 120 flights on Christmas Day, accounting for 12% of their scheduled trips, according to FlightAware.
Shortened isolation periods
“That isolation time could be further shortened if there are staffing shortages,” the CDC said in a statement, pointing to rising Covid-19 cases due to Omicron.
The agency also recommended that health workers should not be quarantined “after high-risk exposures” to the virus if they are vaccinated and boosted.
Quarantine refers to those who have been exposed but have no infection while isolation refers to those who test positive.
Meanwhile, New York state on Friday launched a more comprehensive isolation policy, allowing fully vaccinated essential workers who test positive for Covid-19 to return to work after five days if they are asymptomatic and have not had a fever for 72 hours, the governor said. said.
Hochul did not explicitly define who is considered an essential worker, but she explained that it also includes those who work in healthcare, sanitation, supermarkets, pharmacies and restaurants.
DailyExpertNews medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen said Friday that she supports the new isolation rules.
“I think it’s very important for us to do this as we are currently facing a potential collapse of our critical infrastructure,” Wen said. “This is why it’s so important for health professionals that we maintain the ability of our hospitals to function – as well as public transport and supermarkets coming in this holiday season. And so many other essential workplaces may be in serious labor shortages.” .”
Preventable hospitalizations cost billions, treasure finds
As hospitals and health officials prepare for Omicron, additional research is underway to analyze earlier stages of the pandemic.
According to data from the United States Department of Health and Human Services, approximately 1.2 million hospitalizations were recorded between June and November 2021. For their analysis, KFF used data from the CDC to estimate that 85% of those hospital admissions were unvaccinated.
Hospital admissions for which Covid-19 was not the primary cause were excluded, as well as hospital admissions that could not have been prevented by vaccines because they are not 100% effective.
Using several studies, KFF estimated the average hospitalization at about $20,000 and preventable Covid-19 hospitalizations at a total of $13.8 billion dollars over the course of six months.
“The financial costs of treating unvaccinated people for Covid-19 are borne not only by patients, but by society at large, including taxpayer-funded public programs and private insurance premiums paid by employees, companies and individual buyers,” the analysts wrote.
“While there was of course a societal cost to develop and distribute vaccines, the vaccines save the US health system money in the longer term by avoiding expensive hospitalizations.”
DailyExpertNews’s Deidre McPhillips, Evan Simko-Bednarski, Andy Rose, Michael Nedelman, Veronica Stracqualursi and Stella Chan contributed to this report.