October 12, 2022 – NBC News reports that hospitals are preparing for what could be a very difficult winter season with COVID, as it is expected to also include high levels of the flu and other respiratory illnesses that have been largely inactive for the last couple of years.
According to the CDC, flu cases are already on the rise throughout the country, and the number of RSV and enterovirus cases among children are rising as well. This perfect storm of respiratory viruses is happening at a time when health care systems are strained from staffing shortages caused by the pandemic.
“If you go around the nation and ask hospitals how busy they are, every single one of them will tell you: They’re busy,” Dr. Carlos del Rio, an executive associate dean at the Emory University School of Medicine and Grady Health System in Atlanta, told NBC News.
COVID cases have been steadily decreasing since early August, as have COVID-related hospitalizations. “We’ll see an increase in Covid cases — probably not to the extent that we saw in the winter of 2020 and winter of 2021 — but we will see a rise,” said Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic. “Most of those will be infections that lead to mild to moderate illness.”
Even with a decrease in COVID cases, the convergence of the respiratory illnesses could pose a significant problem for understaffed hospitals.