Colorado’s hospitals are expected to get a relative break from COVID-19 over the next few months, but a return to any kind of pre-pandemic normal remains elusive as medical staff deal with burnout and patients now are coming in sicker.
The virus’s omicron variant spread so widely that the state’s modeling team believes that, by the end of this month, the vast majority of Coloradans will have some immunity because they’ve been vaccinated, survived an infection, or both. It’s not clear what will happen as that immunity fades or if new variants develop, but it should keep hospitalizations relatively low for a few months.
While a reprieve from COVID-19 is welcome, it doesn’t mean everything is back to the way it was before the pandemic, said Dr. Anuj Mehta, a critical and pulmonary care physician at Denver Health.
Hospitals need to manage a backlog of patients who didn’t get non-emergency care during previous surges — some of whom may be significantly sicker than they would have been with timely treatment — and they’re trying to do it with fewer nurses and providers, he said.
Read more at The Denver Post.