Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said Sunday that the next few weeks could be one of the worst periods of the coronavirus epidemic yet, and that the state was working against staffing shortages in “overflowing” hospitals.
“We believe that the next four to six weeks are really going to be a terrible point in this crisis, and it’s potentially going to be the worst part of the whole two-year fight,” Mr. Hogan said on the CNN program “State of the Union.”
He said that despite having the highest vaccination rates in the country, hospitals were overflowing with unvaccinated patients.
“We’re going to take and continue to take every action we possibly can to help our hospitals, our nursing homes and to keep people safe,” he said.
Maintaining staff in medical facilities will be one of the biggest challenges in the coming weeks. Covid stated that many nurses and doctors have been suffering from fatigue and have been coming down with him.
“You can’t really manufacture doctors and nurses that don’t exist, and frankly, these heroes on the front line that have been working so hard for two years, there’s fatigue,” Mr. Hogan said. The state, among other measures, provided emergency funding to hospitals and nursing homes in an effort to mitigate the crisis.
Maryland’s hospitals, like those in many other states, are reaching capacity. According to the New York Times database a state reported more than 8,800 new patients per day on January 1. This is a more than 560percent increase over the previous two weeks. Hospitalizations are up more than 60 percent, to an average of almost 2,400.
It’s unclear how many hospitalizations are patients infected with Omicron versus the Delta variant, which is thought to be significantly more virulent. According to the C.D.C. approximately 58 percent of Omicron cases in Maryland and neighboring states are at present Omicron.
Maryland Hospital Association stated that there were approximately 400,000 hospital patients. surpassed the state’s Covid peak from last winter.
The chief medical officer at the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis told MSNBC that the state was “at a tipping point,” and that there were no beds left open.
He also spoke about his recent breakthrough case with the coronavirus.
“Because I had that protection,” Mr. Hogan said of the vaccine, “I had sort of a bad cold. What we’re faced with now — unfortunately, this new omicron variant is impacting just about everyone, including many people who are fully protected, but it’s keeping them out of the hospital and that’s the thing we have to keep in mind.”
Source: NY Times
