{"id":2663,"date":"2023-02-19T09:11:46","date_gmt":"2023-02-19T15:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=2663"},"modified":"2023-02-19T09:11:50","modified_gmt":"2023-02-19T15:11:50","slug":"an-icu-doctor-on-how-this-covid-wave-is-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/02\/19\/an-icu-doctor-on-how-this-covid-wave-is-different\/","title":{"rendered":"An ICU Doctor on How This COVID Wave Is Different"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p>(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/ideas\/archive\/2023\/02\/icu-doctor-how-covid-wave-different\/673082\/\">The Atlantic<\/a>) It\u2019s hard to tell from the data who\u2019s still getting hospitalized with COVID. One frontline worker shares her observations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last week,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/covid.cdc.gov\/covid-data-tracker\/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00\">3,171 COVID deaths were reported in the United States<\/a>. In the past seven days, an average of 13 COVID deaths&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/projects\/california-coronavirus-cases-tracking-outbreak\/los-angeles-county\/\">were reported each day in Los Angeles County, California<\/a>, the country\u2019s most populous county. Although this February\u2019s death rate is lower than that of the previous two, COVID patients are still fighting for their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Isabel Pedraza is the director of the intensive-care unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, overseeing the care of some of the hospital\u2019s sickest patients. Someone treated in her unit may have had a heart attack, been in a traumatic accident, or be battling COVID on a ventilator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pedraza told me that this winter, her unit is seeing fewer COVID cases than expected. (Patients with non-life-threatening COVID cases\u2014the majority of those in the hospital\u2014are treated by her colleagues \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.verywellhealth.com\/hospital-floors-and-units-3156895\">on the floor<\/a>,\u201d where they aren\u2019t monitored quite as closely.) As for the patients who do wind up in the ICU with COVID, she told me, treating them is much less stressful than when the virus first arrived. By now \u201cit\u2019s a lot less chaotic,\u201d she said. \u201cIt feels like we have a path and an algorithm, and ways that we know we can save people.\u201d At the same time, Pedraza said, more people are coming into her unit severely ill for other reasons\u2014such as kidney and heart problems\u2014than before the pandemic began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/accounts.theatlantic.com\/products\/free-trial\/?source=gate_toast\"><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(The Atlantic) It\u2019s hard to tell from the data who\u2019s still getting hospitalized with COVID. One frontline worker shares her observations. Last week,&nbsp;3,171 COVID deaths were reported in the United States. In the past seven days, an average of 13 COVID deaths&nbsp;were reported each day in Los Angeles County, California, the country\u2019s most populous county. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"#ICU #Doctor #POV on this #covid19 wave article from @TheAtlantic ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid","category-emerging-infectious-diseases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2664,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2663\/revisions\/2664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}