Getting vaccinated on the Green in July.
Covid hospitalizations are on the rise — particularly, overwhelmingly, among the unvaccinated.
And three scenarios currently present themselves for emerging from a pandemic entering its third year.
Top Yale New Haven Health (YNHH) officials delivered that news Wednesday morning during the regional hospital system’s latest Covid-19 virtual press conference, which was held online via Zoom and Facebook Live.
YNHH CEO Marna Borgstrom and Chief Clinical Officer Thomas Balcezak said that there are currently 210 Covid-positive inpatients across the hospital’s seven campuses in Connecticut and Rhode Island. That includes 112 patients at YNHH’s two hospitals in New Haven, as well as 51 severely ill patients in intensive care units (ICU).
Those numbers are well above those reported on Nov. 18, when there were 72 Covid-positive inpatients systemwide, including 32 in New Haven and 16 in ICUs.
“The numbers have risen substantially,” Borgstrom said.
“We are very, very busy across our health system,” Balcezak added, referring not just to the surge in Covid-positive inpatients, but also to patients who have delayed care on other medical issues during the pandemic and to a rise in seasonal flu cases.
These hospitalization numbers still pale in comparison to those at the height of the pandemic last year before the development of vaccines, they said. The numbers are still concerning, given the relative lull in cases over the summer.
Asked for more details on who exactly is hospitalized with Covid at this point, Balcezak was unequivocal: A vast majority of these patients are unvaccinated.
Last week, he said, 12.5 percent of YNHH’s Covid-positive inpatients were fully vaccinated.
The week before that, 17 percent were fully vaccinated.
The week before that, 17.6 percent were fully vaccinated.
The week before that, 10 percent were fully vaccinated.
That means that roughly 85 to 90 percent of those hospitalized in recent weeks are not fully vaccinated.
“If you want to reduce the number of hospitalizations, the message is clear,” Balcezak said. “Get vaccinated.”
Balcezak said those percentages involve patients who came into the hospital with Covid symptoms, as opposed to patients who were admitted for other reasons and then tested positive for Covid.
How This Ends?
YNHH Chief Clinical Officer Thomas Balcezak.
Balcezak was also asked about how this Covid-19 nightmare ends.
YNHH’s top doctor offered “three possible paths that we may take” to get out of this pandemic:
Path #1: The Omicron variant “takes over, is less deadly, and we learn to live with it.” That is: If the new highly infectious Omicron variant currently sweeping the world does turn out to be less deadly than the dominant Delta variant, as might be the case, then more people might get infected — but hopefully fewer people will get sick and die.
As part of that scenario, Balcezak said, “we get better vaccines and we try to encourage folks to get vaccine, and it becomes similar to influenza.”
Right now, he said, this path is looking pretty unlikely — because Covid is currently around 10 times more lethal than the flu. “Unless we see a real reduction in the mortality rate of Covid,” he said, ” I don’t think we’re going to be willing to accept that pathway.”
Path #2: “Humanity becomes vaccinated and those who aren’t vaccinated get infected and become immune that way.” This is the true “herd immunity” scenario, he said. Based on how many people around the country and the world persist in not getting vaccinated, he said, herd immunity is also “somewhat unlikely to happen in the short run.”
Path #3: “The third is we continue see outbreaks like in the last four waves that we have to continue to live and deal with,” he said. Balcezak described this scenario as “the most concerning,” and, for now, the most likely. At least for another year or so. “Hopefully we’re able to blunt these waves more substantially than we have in the past” with the help of vaccines and other new treatments of Covid, “and then we learn to live with those waves,” he said.