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Coronavirus-related hospitalizations are climbing again in the U.S., older adults are accounting for an increasing share of U.S. deaths and fewer than half of nursing home residents have been vaccinated against COVID-19.
The worrisome signs of a tough winter for seniors worried Bartley O’Hara, an 81-year-old nursing home resident who said he was “vaccinated” and Tracking trends in coronavirus hospitals as they ‘zoom in’ for older people but remain flat for younger people.
“A sense of urgency isn’t universal,” says O’Hara in Washington, D.C., but “if you’re 21, you should probably worry about your grandma. We’re all in this together.” A disturbing indicator of older age: Hospitalization Coronavirus disease It’s up more than 30% in two weeks.
Dr. Rochelle Valensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said much of the increase was driven by older adults and people with existing health problems. Those numbers include everyone who tested positive, regardless of why they were admitted. When it comes to protecting older people, “we’ve done a terrible job in this country,” said Dr. Eric Topol, director of Scripps Research Translational Institute.
As nursing home leaders double down on efforts to get staff and residents vaccinated against the new vaccine, now recommended for those 6 months and older, they face complacency, misinformation and COVID-19 fatigue. They called on the White House to help with an “all in” approach.
Katie Smith Sloan, president of LeadingAge, which represents nonprofit nursing homes, said clear information was needed on what vaccines can and cannot do.
A breakthrough infection doesn’t mean the vaccine has failed, but that misperception is hard to dispel, she said. Say. “This virus is insidious, it’s just popping up everywhere. We just have to be real about it.”
Problems include unwarranted hesitation in prescribing the antiviral drug Paxlovid to older adults, prompting five major medical societies to host a web-based educational session for doctors, “Vax & Pax: How to Keep Patients Safe This Winter Easing restrictions, broader immunity among the general public and mixed messages about whether the pandemic is over have softened the sense of threat young people feel. For most, this may be a welcome development, but the attitude has infiltrated nursing homes in disturbing ways.
Nursing home leaders say it has become more difficult to get family consent to vaccinate nursing home residents. Some residents who could give their consent are refusing the shot. Only 23% of nursing home workers were up to date with the COVID-19 vaccine.
Cissy Sanders of Austin, Texas, faced multiple obstacles as she tried to get a booster for her 73-year-old mother who lives in a nursing home. No intensive outpatient visits are scheduled. The agency told her they couldn’t find a vaccinator. So she plans to take her mom to Walgreens later this month.
“I am concerned about the rise in hospitalizations and deaths among the elderly, and that my mother’s nursing home is not urgently vaccinating residents and staff” with the latest booster vaccine, she said.
Staff and visitors are potential entry points for the virus into nursing homes. The best facilities use a multi-layered approach to protect residents with masks, screening questions, temperature checks and enhanced infection control.
“What we’ve learned during COVID is that the speed of transmission depends on the speed of community transmission,” said Tina Sandri, CEO of Forest Hills of DC, a nursing home in the nation’s capital. “I feel safer in my building than anywhere else, including the grocery store.”
Meanwhile, hospitals across the country are seeing an influx of older patients that Topol calls “pretty alarming.” Nationwide, the daily hospitalization rate for people aged 70 and over with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 rose from 8.8 per 100,000 on Nov. 12.1 per 100,000 people. Human services. In California and New York, more seniors have been hospitalized with COVID-19 than in spring and summer, Topol says Omicron wave.
At NYU Langone Health, Dr. Michael Phillips, chief hospital epidemiologist, said an increasing number of older adults are being hospitalized with COVID-19. But the biggest increase he’s seen is in emergency departments, which are “very, very busy” with COVID-19 and flu patients.
Dr. Wesley Long, a Houston Methodist pathologist in Texas, said COVID-19 admissions at his hospital had also increased over the past few weeks, and many of the patients were older adults with other health problems. Some people were admitted with different illnesses and tested positive for COVID-19 in the hospital. good news? “We’re not seeing an increase in ICU admissions,” he said.
New combo booster shot, targeting both omicron and vanilla coronavirus, providing protection against one of the major omicron variants that has driven up cases recently: BQ.1.1, which is particularly good at evading immunity. “But we have a woefully low rate of boosters among older adults,” Topol said, and only about a third of them get the shot.
Houston Methodist health care providers are promoting the booster “at every opportunity,” Long said. But they won’t be giving it to hospitalized COVID-19 patients, who are often told to wait three months after infection to get the drug.
Phillips also urges people to get a booster, especially if they are at risk of becoming seriously ill or plan to spend time with someone who is seriously ill. They’ve seen higher rates of hospitalization among unvaccinated people, he said.
The death toll, like the number of hospitalizations, is now rising. The ultimate worry is that more older people will die. The death rate fell overall last spring and summer as more people gained protection from vaccinations and previous infections. However, the proportion of deaths related to COVID-19 among people aged 85 and over, who make up 2% of the population, increased to 40%.
One in five COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic have occurred in long-term care facilities. Americans need to continue to take the pandemic seriously, said Walid Michelen, chief medical officer of seven nonprofit nursing homes run by the Archdiocese of New York. “It’s not going away. It’s not going away.”
It’s here to stay,” he said. “We’re going to get a new variant, and who knows how aggressive that variant will be? This keeps me up at night. “
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