January 13, 2023 — The coronavirus isn't going away anytime soon, and that may lead to more dangerous waves of respiratory illnesses within the winter that can strain the U.S. health care system for years to come back, says White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha, MD.
People with other serious illnesses could have difficulty getting the care they need and could have to attend long periods within the emergency room before being admitted, Jha said. The Washington Post.
“I worry that our health care system is going to be pretty dysfunctional for years to come. We're not going to be able to care for heart attack patients, we're not going to be able to care for cancer patients, we're not going to be able to care for children with appendicitis because we're going to be overwhelmed with respiratory viruses three to four months of the year,” he said.
Before the pandemic, hospitals typically treated more patients within the winter as a consequence of flu and other respiratory illnesses. But the COVID pandemic means the winter crisis begins months sooner than usual — as early as August or September, Jha says.
“I just think people haven't recognized the chronic costs because we've looked at this as an acute problem,” he said. “We have no idea how difficult this is going to make life for everyone in the long run.”
An unnamed Biden administration official said the situation might not be as dire as Jha predicted.
“It's not a far-fetched hypothesis,” the official said. “But I don't think we've reached a stable disease state to say with certainty what we'll see year after year. It's very dynamic.”
This winter, cases of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are emerging alongside COVID and flu, but data shows that flu and RSV peaked before the vacations, showing that the U.S. avoided a post-holiday respiratory disease “triple epidemic,” in keeping with a CDC epidemiologist. said NPR.
The New York Timesreported As of Friday, the U.S. was reporting a median of about 60,000 latest COVID cases per day, a 4% increase in two weeks. An estimated 564 COVID deaths are being reported each day, a 61% increase in two weeks, in keeping with the newspaper.