Over the past few weeks there have been many reports of hospitals being overwhelmed by COVID-19 surges. This is completely…
understandable where surges due to the delta variant have been very difficult to contain. For example, during the India’s second major wave earlier this year COVID-19 cases peaked at over 400,000 per day (403,405 on May 8 2021). It would be unreasonable to expect that the health system could cope with such numbers.
Similarly, in places in the US the delta variant has caused major surges, and strains on hospitals have been reported in Florida, Iowa, Mississippi, and others. Again this is understandable given that they are dealing with relatively large numbers of people all at approximately the same time.
There is talk of overwhelmed hospitals in Australia as well. Sydney has reporting over 1,000 cases per day for the past couple weeks; these are relatively high numbers and maybe understandable that hospitals would feel a significant strain. In Melbourne we have very low numbers in comparison (324 reported today; with relatively few hospitalizations (currently, 120 in hospital, 33 in ICU, and 15 on a ventilator). There is some epidemiological evidence that in the next few weeks cases will rise to ~1,000 per day.
There is talk that hospitals in Melbourne are already under strain even with the relatively minor number of cases reported to date. I’m a Melbournian (since forever), and if we’re honest emergency rooms in major Melbourne hospitals have been strained for all my living memory; if you’ve had the unfortunate experience of needing an emergency room, you’ll know that you’ll be waiting for like a million hours (~6 hours); sometimes it’s ridiculous – of course, there is an attempt to prioritise in order of severity of emergency but … an emergency is an emergency? So, waiting around for half-a-day takes away from the urgency. Anyway, it is definitely a system that needs fixing – beyond the scope of this issue!
In the meantime, the delta variant is not going away easily! Hopefully, we can get vaccination numbers up fast (currently at ~40% fully vaccinated)… and some normality going!
Until next time …