COVID’s latest “ER workers knock” surges

ANN TREE – At the beginning of the year, the emergency department of Michigan Medicine had almost no patients with COVID who came. But that changed at the end of March, when nine patients suddenly tested positive for COVID-19, six of whom needed hospitalization.

Last spring’s rise hit Metro Detroit’s hospital systems hard, and cases and deaths continue to rise, with health officials sounding the alarm.

“It marked a sudden departure from where I was,” Brad Uren, a physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Michigan Medicine, Brad Uren, said in a press release. “We need to control this now, because it has the potential to overwhelm the health care system.”

Read: 54 meals: Beaumont officials on Michigan restrictions, hospital condition, COVID statistics

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Uren said that while people stayed home last year, as the state – and the world – rushed to learn more about the new virus and how it spreads, the lack of assembly and meal restrictions helped to current figures.

“People were staying at home, people were isolating and disguising themselves, we were distanced,” Uren said in a statement. “Now, we are not as diligent and there is another increase in COVID in addition to the usual volume we see in the emergency department of normal activity. And the combination of the two is intensifying. ”

Michigan currently has the highest seven-day case rate in the country and beds are filling up quickly in hospitals.

“We are used to operating in difficult times,” Uren said in a statement. “But we are working close to the edge of the envelope of what many of us would consider normal now.”

Another worrying factor: COVID patients at Michigan Medicine are getting younger.

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Uren said that this is probably due to the priorities of older adults to receive the first vaccines against COVID-19, and then the fact that people between the ages of 20 and 50 are more likely to work outside the home and more mobile.

Emergency visits for COVID in the hospital’s pediatric population also increased by 10-20%, according to Michigan Medicine.

Read: COVID indicators in Michigan: cases, hospitalizations, “extremely worrying” positivity rate

Although it is rare for a child to be hospitalized for COVID symptoms, those with pre-existing conditions are.

“We are seeing an increase in pediatric COVID, many in the age group of young teens, possibly caused by transmission due to school sports,” said Prashant Mahajan, head of the pediatric emergency department at Michigan Children’s Hospital CS Mott, Prashant Mahajan. .

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Both doctors suspect that the growing cases in younger populations are due to the more contagious variant B.1.1.7, known to be active in Michigan.

A major concern with COVID in children is the development of a rare multisystem inflammatory syndrome called MIS-C.

“We have not seen many of those children, but we should anticipate that this will happen,” Mahajan said in a statement. “The other thing that is really unknown is the proportion of children who end up having long-term effects of the virus, which is now increasingly recognized in adults with COVID.”

Read: The University of Michigan physician answers parents’ questions about the dangerous condition of COVID in children

Despite a steady increase in vaccinations, this new increase is beginning to show tension in hospital workers, Uren said.

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“I see this every day on the faces of my colleagues,” he said in a statement. “We work as a team and I’m so proud of them that they’ve been with this for so long, but it’s a big burden for people.”

Doctors at Michigan Medicine’s emergency department are asking people to receive the vaccine, limit who they interact with, and follow social distancing and masking.

“I am concerned that the hesitation of the vaccine will slow us down and cause us problems even after a period in which vaccines could bring us back to normal,” Uren said in a statement. “We are ready to end the virus. It’s not over with us yet. ”