1 in 3 in hospitals with COVID will die
Perhaps the biggest opinion shared about COVID-19 is that it is just like the flu.
Ohiohealth President and CEO Dr. Stephen Markovich has certainty heard that.
“It’s not unusual (that) I’ll have a conversation with somebody that’s in my social circle and they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s just the flu, I’m not worried about it,” he said. “If you end up in the ER and you get hospitalized, you got a one-in-three chance of not seeing your loved ones on the back end.”
Dispatch Opinion and Community Engagement Editor Amelia Robinson sought facts during a recent discussion with Markovich and Mount Carmel Health System President and CEO Lorraine Lutton.
They urged Greater Columbus residents to take the pandemic seriously and take precaution.
Last week, the pair penned a joint letter with Nationwide Children’s Hospital CEO Tim Robinson and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Andy Thomas urging vaccines and sounding the alarm about hospital capacity.
Lutton told Amelia Robinson the delta variant is taking its toll. Her hospital saw 19 deaths during the five days prior to their discussion Monday.
“We are starting to see people, they’re not getting off the vent,” she said.
Robinson asked Markovich and Lutton to address the misconception comparing COVID-19 to the flu.
Robinson: How serious is this? A lot of people want to say it’s like the flu. Is it like the flu?
Markovich: “The symptoms may in some cases be like the flu, but the outcomes are different. We’ve had about 1.4 million cases in Ohio that resulted in 70,000 hospitalizations, so that’s about 5%.
Five percent of the people with this get hospitalized. That’s way more than the flu. But this statistic, of the 70,000 people that have been admitted to our hospitals, 22,000 have died.one in three people roughly that get admitted to the hospital.
If you come through the ER and you’ve got COVID and the doctor thinks you’re sick enough to be hospitalized, you’ve got a one-in-three chance that you won’t make it out of the hospital despite the best efforts of great institutions like Mount Carmel and Children’s, Ohio State, and Ohiohealth.why would you take that risk?
This is what the community needs to know: this is not simply the flu and especially for those that are younger. We’re seeing more and more young people that are being devastated by this illness.
So, take it seriously.”
Lutton: “It’s upwards of 660,000 Americans have died since the beginning of this pandemic. That’s more than (the American lives lost during) World War II.
That is huge. At least at Mount Carmel today, the biggest band of population hospitalized are between 50 and 59. So, it is moving to a younger group who are being hospitalized and having such severe morbidity and mortality.”