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Syracuse, New York – After nine grueling months of the pandemic, Onondaga County residents could be forgiven for hoping that the deaths of 18 coronavirus patients in a single day on Wednesday were a one-time thing. A stroke of luck. They were not.
There will likely be more days like Wednesday, judging by the crowds of Covid-19 patients in hospitals in Syracuse, a local expert said.
It’s hard, cold math, said Dr. Stephen Thomas. He is Chief of Infectious Diseases at Upstate Medical University and a Global Principal Investigator for a clinical trial of the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
Syracuse hospitals now have more than three times as many coronavirus patients as they did in spring, the last time deaths peaked. A fraction of them will die, Thomas said. We may not see 18 more deaths in a day, but we will see extremely high numbers, he said.
The Covid areas of Upstate Hospital, where Thomas works, are filled with patients. In intensive care units, a third of Covid patients are on ventilators, he said.
When the virus hits the community, it ends up reaching frail and elderly people who are at high risk of dying.
“These people end up in the hospital,” Thomas said. “And a certain percentage of them will die. This is what we are seeing. ”
Yes, hospitals are treating Covid better now than they were in the spring. More patients are recovering quickly. The average patient stay is shorter.
But the virus is going to be fatal for some patients, Thomas said. The more cases there are, the more deaths.
“I just don’t see how we can avoid it,” he said.
County Director Ryan McMahon announced on Wednesday that 18 county residents had died from Covid-19, the most since the pandemic hit central New York City. The previous record for a day of death was 11, set on Saturday. There have been 91 deaths in the first 16 days of this month, an average of more than five per day.
Unfortunately, there is no end in sight.
Every day, Syracuse hospitals set new records for the number of patients with Covid-19. There were 299 county residents in hospitals as of Wednesday, plus 78 others from outside the county, McMahon said. In total, Covid patients accounted for nearly one in three patients in a hospital bed.
“It’s amazing how different it is from spring,” said Thomas.
The numbers are staggering. A coronavirus outbreak that started around Halloween put three times as many Covid-19 patients in hospital in November and December than in spring. The number of intensive care patients has increased by an average of 62% and continues to rise.
The Upstate units for coronavirus patients are full, Thomas said – “like, no rooms at the hostel full.”
When the coronavirus hit New York state in the spring, central New York City was among the least affected parts of the state. Areas in the north of the state, by contrast, have been decimated.
This time it’s different. Central New York is a hotspot compared to most of New York. The Covid-19 death rate in the past seven days in Onondaga County – 12.2 per 100,000 population – is more than three times the average for the state as a whole. New York State reported 686 deaths for the week starting December 10, or about 3.5 per 100,000 population.
What changed?
Like many other parts of the country, Syracuse appears to suffer from a lack of determination on the part of the public to avoid contact with other people and to protect each other by wearing masks, Thomas said. Too many people do not appreciate the risk of transmitting the virus to the most vulnerable residents, he said.
“Like everywhere else in the country, it’s the people who make the decisions,” Thomas said. “That’s really what it comes down to. ”
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