Many patients hospitalized for other ailments, also testing positive for Covid

[Democrats Are Cowards]

Patients admitted to the hospital with Covid — instead of for Covid — may
be earlier in the course of the disease and be far more contagious,
doctors say.

By Berkeley Lovelace Jr.
As the super contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads,
hospitals are seeing a growing trend — patients admitted for other
ailments are also testing positive for Covid-19. Doctors say it may mean
more people have asymptomatic or undiagnosed disease than the current data
show.

Across New York-Presbyterian’s 10 campuses, just less than half of
patients are admitted with Covid, meaning they were hospitalized for a
non-Covid related issue but were also tested and found to be carrying the
virus. Statewide the figure is 43 percent, according to state data.

“I’ve admitted patients with abdominal pain, I’ve admitted patients with
chest pain who had no symptoms of respiratory illness, cough or Covid, and
they just ended up being Covid positive,” said Dr. Rahul Sharma, the
emergency physician-in-chief for the NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell
Medical Center.

Hospitals across the country are also seeing a greater proportion of these
so-called incidental Covid cases amid the omicron surge.

In Austin, Texas, some local hospitals report that 30 percent to 40
percent of the patients admitted for other reasons are also Covid
positive, Dr. Desmar Walkes, medical director/health authority for the
city of Austin and Travis County, said a news call Thursday.

Dr. Ryan Maves, an infectious disease and critical care physician at the
Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina, said he is also seeing
more of these cases than usual, although he added most are mild or
asymptomatic.

Health experts say the emerging trend of patients admitted to the hospital
with Covid — instead of for Covid — may actually be a good sign, as it
supports growing evidence that omicron, already the dominant strain in the
United States, is less likely to cause severe illness than earlier
variants were, especially in people who are fully vaccinated and boosted.

But it also complicates how one views a Covid hospitalization in the U.S.,
they said. Similar to previous Covid waves, patients infected with the
virus are quickly filling up hospitals beds, overwhelming hospital staff
and delaying elective procedures, but not as many of them will suffer from
struggling to breathe and needing supplemental oxygen, among other
conditions.

Hospitalizations may become a less reliable gauge of the pandemic's toll
going forward, experts say.

“I still think hospitalization data is the best data we have," said Dr.
Stephen Schrantz, an infectious disease expert at UChicago Medicine, "but
it is probably only useful as a relative value, meaning Covid is up or
down, and not accurate as far as actual cases."

Covid could worsen underlying illnesses
Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital,
said hospital staff shouldn't "downplay" patients admitted with Covid
because they are often earlier in the course of their disease and may be
far more contagious to others, including to at-risk patients and health
care workers.

Doctors also still must be careful not to dismiss patients who test
positive for Covid but are not presenting the more obvious symptoms
because the virus could be exacerbating an underlying medical condition,
said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at the University
of Toronto.

Maves of Wake Forest School of Medicine said physicians often start
patients who tested positive for Covid on a round of the antiviral drug
remdesivir — in addition to care for other ailments — if they have a
comorbidity that puts them at greater risk of developing severe disease.

Other effective treatments, like monoclonal antibodies or oral antiviral
drugs, from Pfizer and Merck, are currently in short supply.

Testing positive for Covid can also delay care for other conditions,
doctors say.

“There a lot of patients who have some sort of chronic disease, whether
it’s mental health issues, depression, addiction, they’re on dialysis, and
so they rely on services that are outside the hospital to take care of
them,” said Mucio Kit Delgado, an ER doctor at Penn Presbyterian Medical
Center emergency department in Philadelphia. But if they test positive,
"the amount of places becomes very limited to where they can go. And so
then, they just get stuck in your emergency department."

Dr. Ali Raja, an emergency physician at Massachusetts General Hospital,
said he has witnessed the same thing, specifically patients who need
psychiatric care but can't go to the psychiatric unit because they are
positive for Covid.

"We have had kids wait four weeks for pediatric psychiatric beds," he
said, noting some of those children have to wait in the emergency
department.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/omicron-hospital-many-patients-
hospitalized-ailments-also-test-positiv-rcna11247