COVID-19 spread not slowing

♦ While hospitalizations and ICU admissions have gone up, the number of people requiring ventilators has not.

COVID-19 cases around the world have topped the 14 million mark and, locally, the number of new cases remains as high as it’s ever been since the early stages of the pandemic.

In the past seven days, 122 new Floyd County residents have tested positive for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Over the past 14 days, 273 Floyd County residents have tested positive for COVID-19.

With that number going up, so has the number of people being hospitalized.

Floyd Medical Center reported having 26 COVID-19 patients Monday, while Redmond Regional Medical Center reported having 15. That was down two patients from the Sunday report.

Redmond officials said 11 of those patients were being treated in the ICU. Redmond has 12 beds in its ICU that are designated to accept COVID-19 patients but has a total of 40 ICU beds that could be used if necessary, and available.

Redmond CEO John Quinlivan said Monday afternoon that only one of those 11 people is on a ventilator.

At FMC, only four of the hospital’s COVID-19 patients are in ICU beds. There are 38 ICU beds at the hospital — not counting an overflow building that contains an additional 20 ICU beds for COVID-19 patients.

In the Wednesday edition of the Rome News-tribune we’ll be continuing this report with information from local medical experts providing more context to what the increase in patients actually means.

In the US, more than 3.6 million cases have been confirmed with almost 140,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.

Dr. John Brooks, chief medical officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 Response Team, said during a Monday webinar that the number of new cases continues to rise steadily throughout the country.

A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association last week examined the long term side effects of COVID-19 survivors in Rome, Italy.

And despite the number of people who only have slight or no symptoms of the disease caused by the coronavirus, there’s a question as to whether the disease carries long term consequences.

The Italian study reported in JAMA showed that 55% reported three or more symptoms 60 days after their initial diagnosis. Over 40% responded that they had not returned to the quality of life they enjoyed pre-diagnosis.

The most common symptoms that were persistent included fatigue, shortness of breath and pain.

“This is a serious illness and has still unknown long-term side effects,” Brooks said.

Brooks also cited a Morbidity and Mortality report published by the CDC last week to back up the efficacy of wearing cloth face masks. He said consistent and correct use of face covering is an important tool for minimizing the spread of the virus.

The study also showed a lower average age of infection than has been previously reported.

That study showed the average age was 56.5 years and the median hospital stay was 13 days. Of the just over 140 participants in the study, only seven were mechanically ventilated.

The findings are similar to what leaders in local hospitals are reporting now — a younger demographic of people who have not been as sick as some of the older people with underlying conditions who contracted the coronavirus early on.

Quinlivan said that during the initial phase of the pandemic, back in March and April, the average age of patients treated in the ICU at Redmond was 80 — now the average age is 61.

“Most of them now don’t have those comorbidity conditions in those who were hospitalized early on,” Quinlivan said.