Syracuse, NY -- Covid cases in Central New York hospitals are at a seasonal high, with 93 new Covid-positive patients being admitted to local hospitals in the past week.
But unlike past years, this surge isn’t catching anyone off-guard, a local health official says. In fact, these winter-time spikes are likely the new normal.
“It’s really not surprising, given the time of year we’re in,” said Dr. James Alexander, of Onondaga County’s health department. “We don’t really have a definitive seasonality for Covid, but we’ve certainly seen an increase in this time of year.”
The number of hospitalized patients with Covid jumped to 154 across Onondaga, Cayuga, Madison and Oswego counties, including 93 newly diagnosed cases. That’s a spike similar to one from last cold season.
It’s also the trend across the country, where hospitals this week are reinstating mask mandates to combat the virus’s spread. Local hospitals are ramping up their masking policies, too. Upstate University Hospital, which has had a mandate in clinical areas since the summer, has now extended mask wearing to all inpatient and outpatient facilities.
But Alexander said that hospitals are actually coping better with Covid than a year ago. And Covid-related deaths so far are the lowest they’ve been during a spike, averaging about three a week across Central New York, state data shows.
It’s a new normal, where Covid-19 is lumped in with flu, RSV and other similar respiratory diseases, collectively called influenza-like illnesses, Alexander said.
Looking at emergency room admissions for all of those kinds of illnesses, “they’re not outside the realm of what’s expected,” Alexander said.
Such illnesses are never good: they come with hospitalizations and deaths, especially among newborns and the elderly, Alexander said. But they’re here to stay, and this year’s numbers may be what to expect going forward.
“Dreams we have had previously -- that we may isolate and practice good respiratory hygiene -- and Covid would be out of our lives, that’s not going to happen,” Alexander said. “We’re going to be stuck with Covid-19 for the foreseeable future: the rest of our lives and beyond.”
This week, Syracuse’s three hospitals combined to report 100 patients positive with Covid-19. Upstate University and Community General hospitals reported 39 hospitalized patients, Crouse Hospital also had 40 and St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center had 31.
“It’s the most we’ve had this year,” said Crouse spokesman Bob Allen.
Upstate also reported 34 patients with RSV, 22 with flu and four with a combination of the respiratory illnesses. The other hospitals also reported a handful of flu and RSV cases.
Last year, the region was slammed in November with the combination of Covid, flu and RSU, overwhelming the hospitals and forcing some sick patients to be transported to hospitals across Upstate New York.
That hasn’t happened this year, Alexander said.
This season, the RSV surge happened in November. “I don’t think we will see a return with RSV” this year, Alexander said.
But Covid is just spiking now. Alexander said that fewer and fewer people are getting the updated vaccines that have come out since the pandemic. The latest vaccine was only administered to roughly 17% of the population nationally, he said. By comparison, more than 50% of people got the initial Covid vaccine.
“That’s obviously disappointing,” he said. “That’s one of our major weapons against mass hospitalizations and mass-scale mortality and severe disease.”
Alexander said that too many people have assumed that getting Covid won’t have long-term effects. But a growing body of research shows that up to 30% of people who get Covid will experience long-term side effects that could last years.
Those complications include brain fog, fatigue, memory problems and more, he said.
Long-term Covid is a “real thing,” Alexander said.
Staff writer Douglass Dowty can be reached at ddowty@syracuse.com or (315) 470-6070.