WA hospital leaders remain cautious of future COVID surprises even as case rates drop
Hospital officials on Tuesday gave what they hoped would be their last COVID-19 update as the current Omicron wave recedes.
Washington State Hospital Association executive vice president Taya Briley told reporters hospitals had seen a general “decompression” of capacity when it came to COVID.
At the height of the Omicron surge on Jan. 20, Briley said, “we had a seven-day rolling average of COVID-related hospitalizations at 2,248 confirmed cases across Washington state. We’ve seen a double-digit percentage decrease in the number of COVID hospitalizations the past four weeks.
“There was an average of 960 COVID confirmed hospitalizations this past week compared to the prior week’s average of 1,248.”
The state averaged 103 new COVID hospitalizations each day this past week, and roughly 10 to 15 COVID deaths a day. Briley said the average number of COVID patients on a ventilator was 62, “a 31 percent decrease or 29 fewer patients when compared to the prior weeks average of 91.”
Of those still dying from COVID, “These are family members, they are loved ones, they are parents, and I think we can get numb to the statistics but these are real people,” Briley noted.
Dr. Santiago Neme is a UW Medicine clinical associate professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases and medical director of UW Medical Center, Northwest. Neme said he’d seen a “significant” drop of COVID patients at his facilities.
“At UW Medicine as of 8 a.m. this morning, we have a total of 24 (COVID) patients across all three hospitals,” Neme said. “This is a significant drop from our peak about five weeks ago when we had a total of 204 patients across all three hospitals.”
Only four of those patients, he added, are in ICU. The remaining 20 are in acute care.
Dr. Chris Ladish is chief clinical officer of Pediatric Behavioral Health at MultiCare’s Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in Tacoma. Ladish said the health system had been able to “stand down” from the use of tents to accommodate a previous overflow of patients.
“Our Incident Command System, while it continues to meet, is reduced dramatically in terms of frequency,” she added.
Ladish noted that “our incidence of children coming in with COVID has gone down” but that Mary Bridge providers “have definitely continued to see strong behavioral health volumes.”
She said isolation and the fear of illness or losing loved ones have all greatly added to the mental health stressors facing kids, with an estimated 200,000 kids nationwide having lost a primary caregiver throughout this pandemic.
“In our emergency rooms, we’re seeing high volumes of children ... with suicidality or suicide risk as the predominant presentation,” she said. “Of our behavioral health volumes at Mary Bridge, 68 percent of those .... have presented with some form of suicide risk or concern around suicidality.”
She added, “We used to quote around one in five children suffers from a mental health condition. We’re now quoting closer to one in four.”
Dealing with Omicron’s aftermath also means catching up with delayed care across systems, which Neme said at UW is now the biggest challenge to their capacity for intake, taking on non-urgent procedures and surgeries as referrals flow in.
According to Briley, “While waiting, patients have often experienced a worsening of their condition, so are coming in sicker, and this makes recovery more challenging. Hospital stays may be longer, and the burden on staff and families to support recovery might be greater.”
She said hospitals are assessing taking on the backlogs by handling most urgent cases first.
“But they’re also considering how long the patient will need to be in hospital and if there is a solid discharge plan,” she added.
Those who spoke at Tuesday’s briefing were not eager to shift to a completely mask-free society just yet, with hospitals slated to continue their own indoor masking policies after the state’s ending of indoor mandates March 12.
“We both understand the desire to resume a more normal way of living with COVID and have some concerns about what this could mean if COVID case trends begin to increase again,” Briley said.
She said hospital leaders were recommending people continue to wear “good masks when in indoor spaces. This is both for your protection and for the protection of our most vulnerable neighbors until we have a few months of really low cases.”
“I am concerned about the lifting, but, at the same time, we’ve been in this pandemic for over two years,” Neme said. “Cases are dropping. I think it’s natural to follow the evidence and really adjust what we’re doing. And I do think that you know, it’s gonna be something that we need to evaluate.”
Ladish added, “I think it’s important to say ... at this snapshot in time with all that we are seeing, people are feeling comfortable making this decision. That doesn’t mean that as a state we won’t adjust should the situation or status change.”
This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 12:48 PM with the headline "WA hospital leaders remain cautious of future COVID surprises even as case rates drop."
