Doctors warn minor COVID spikes could occur when school lets out
GALESBURG — This April, regional hospitals saw their COVID-19 numbers climb for the first time since late 2020. As the year has passed into May, doctors at OSF St. Mary Medical Center say that this increase has calmed down.
Dr. Angelo Soyangco, MD, an OSF pulmonologist, says doctors continue to see a huge drop in COVID patients from last November and December, when hospitals suspended much of their non-essential services for the sake of COVID patients.
When COVID patients do make their way into the hospitals now, they are often younger, as vaccinations in Knox County have now been given to the majority of people ages 65 and older.
The treatment of these patients, he says, has improved over the past year. When Knox County had its first COVID-19 patient in April of 2020, there was still not much known about COVID-19. Medications were still experimental, with steroids, hydroxychloroquine and ventilators making up much of the response. Treatment for COVID has become more sophisticated since then.
Now, there are therapeutic interventions available and new experimental treatments such as convalescent plasma for COVID-19, blood products obtained from patients who had COVID and developed antibodies. Antiviral agents such as remdesivir have also improved outcomes in patients with COVID infections.
Mortality rates in COVID patients has dropped, he said, as a result. Fewer are requiring ventilators, which are now only being used as last resorts. The prevalence of vaccinations has kept more people out of the hospital as well. While COVID-19 vaccines can not totally prevent COVID infections in all cases, those who do still contract the coronavirus will have milder symptoms if they are vaccinated.
Dr. Branden Briggs, MD, Emergency Department medical director, says that fewer COVID-19 patients have made their way into the emergency department as well.
“There has been a small spike in the last six to eight weeks, but much smaller than we experienced in the fall of last year,” he said, with a lower percentage of emergency department patients having COVID-19.
Testing has also become much more rapid. Any patient admitted or transferred can receive a rapid COVID-19 test, which usually turns around results in a half hour instead of the several days COVID-19 tests have taken for results last year.
These tests are given for routine screenings more than for symptomatic patients, and the lower volumes of COVID cases have allowed testing to become more precautionary and be given to people who are not showing COVID symptoms.
“There were more testing restrictions when COVID-19 was at its height because of lack of the (testing) reagent. That probably led to less testing at that time,” Briggs said.
As the summer approaches, the doctors at OSF are not sure what exactly will happen. They say the spike in April could have been attributed to spring break, and we may see that repeat as young people get out of school, especially if vaccination numbers cannot improve.
“Having more patients vaccinated, we expect the cases to go down and those people developing severe complications requiring hospitalization will go down also, but again, there could be some minor spikes,” Soyangco said.
The focus then will shift to increasing vaccinations. Soyangco notes that even some retired doctors and friends of his have been resistant to be vaccinated, either due to fear of the new mRNA technology behind the vaccines or fear of side effects.
In Knox County, vaccination numbers have been lagging as of late, with a seven day rolling average of 121 COVID vaccinations daily in the county, and 36.26% of the county now fully vaccinated.
“Everyone wants to return to normal and we definitely have a solution at hand,” Briggs said. “The reluctance to get (vaccinated) has been pretty disheartening as a medical professional who wants to go back to the way we were in 2019 or so.”
He said the views on vaccination have become politicized unfortunately.
The COVID-19 pandemic will make 2020 a year that people will remember, but also one that the medical field will look back at as an important time of development and growth, Soyangco said. Things that were once counterintuitive, like putting on multiple layers of PPE to talk to COVID patients, has become second nature, and communicating with earlier-hit regions such as New York City have allowed treatment protocol to improve.
The development and proliferation of new antiviral agents and mRNA vaccines, Soyangco says, will also set a standard for future pandemics.
May 20, 2021 at 06:02PM
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