COVID-19 is becoming more prevalent in Central Alabama as we close out 2022 and begin 2023. 530 people in Alabama are in the hospital with COVID-19 at last check. The state started the month of December with just 264 people hospitalized with the virus, meaning that number doubled in the last month.COVID-19 will be front and center for some healthcare providers as the new year begins. Hospitals are managing additional COVID patients on top of everything else they normally deal with.”You know, I think likely early in the year we’re probably going to see fairly high rates of hospitalization from the combination of influenza and COVID,” Dr. Don Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association, says. It’s flu that kept area urgent care centers busy for most of December before COVID-19 started picking up later in the month. At one point, some locations were treating 80 to 90 people a day. However, there are other urgent matters besides flu and COVID. “Well, there’s definitely multi-tasking,” Dr. David Marotta with American Family Care says. “Not only are patients coming in for respiratory symptoms, we are still at the Hoover location seeing our workman’s compensation patients. We’re still seeing high school physicals. We’re still seeing the traumas, the orthopedic injuries.” For hospitals, there’s just as much concern about flu patients as there is about COVID-19 patients. “COVID takes up a hospital bed, but so does influenza,” Williamson points out. Central Alabama saw post-Thanksgiving sickness due to holiday gatherings. Physicians are concerned about the same scenario following Christmas and New Year’s. Urgent care centers are expecting a busy start to the year. “They’d rather come to the urgent care setting where they can be seen in a timely manner, get treated, have a test result within 15-20 minutes,” Marotta says. Doctors are cautiously optimistic about 2023 as a whole where COVID-19 is concerned, unless a new variant develops.”If it becomes more like Delta, then we could be back into some very unpleasant days with higher hospitalizations,” Williamson adds. Hospitals are more limited in what they can do right now because staffing is less than what it was earlier in the pandemic. Physicians are urging people to do all they can to avoid getting sick in the first place.
COVID-19 is becoming more prevalent in Central Alabama as we close out 2022 and begin 2023.
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530 people in Alabama are in the hospital with COVID-19 at last check. The state started the month of December with just 264 people hospitalized with the virus, meaning that number doubled in the last month.
COVID-19 will be front and center for some healthcare providers as the new year begins. Hospitals are managing additional COVID patients on top of everything else they normally deal with.
“You know, I think likely early in the year we’re probably going to see fairly high rates of hospitalization from the combination of influenza and COVID,” Dr. Don Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association, says.
It’s flu that kept area urgent care centers busy for most of December before COVID-19 started picking up later in the month. At one point, some locations were treating 80 to 90 people a day. However, there are other urgent matters besides flu and COVID.
“Well, there’s definitely multi-tasking,” Dr. David Marotta with American Family Care says. “Not only are patients coming in for respiratory symptoms, we are still at the Hoover location seeing our workman’s compensation patients. We’re still seeing high school physicals. We’re still seeing the traumas, the orthopedic injuries.”
For hospitals, there’s just as much concern about flu patients as there is about COVID-19 patients.
“COVID takes up a hospital bed, but so does influenza,” Williamson points out.
Central Alabama saw post-Thanksgiving sickness due to holiday gatherings. Physicians are concerned about the same scenario following Christmas and New Year’s. Urgent care centers are expecting a busy start to the year.
“They’d rather come to the urgent care setting where they can be seen in a timely manner, get treated, have a test result within 15-20 minutes,” Marotta says.
Doctors are cautiously optimistic about 2023 as a whole where COVID-19 is concerned, unless a new variant develops.
“If it becomes more like Delta, then we could be back into some very unpleasant days with higher hospitalizations,” Williamson adds.
Hospitals are more limited in what they can do right now because staffing is less than what it was earlier in the pandemic. Physicians are urging people to do all they can to avoid getting sick in the first place.
Published on The Perfect Enemy at https://bit.ly/3Gur7ig.
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