CLEVELAND — Right now, Cleveland Clinic has 132 patients hospitalized for COVID.
It's a far cry from the packed ICUs and ER overflow of December and part of January. They're still busy, just in a different way.
"All of those elective surgery patients that need to come in and have patiently waited for weeks to come in as they were delayed through the month of December and most of January," explained Chief Safety, Quality and Experience Officer Dr. Leslie Jurecko.
Infectious Disease Chair Dr. Steven Gordon agrees that the virus is trending in the right direction and says at this point, the amount of precautions people take will most likely be related to their personal comfort level as mandates expire. But he says it's too soon to know exactly what COVID will look like in our daily lives for the long-term.
"What we don't know, or at least what I don't know, is whether this is going to settle as a seasonal respiratory virus like the other coronaviruses. You know we're just going to have to wait and see," Gordon said.
California is the first state that will be treating COVID as "endemic," meaning it will likely be part of our long-term reality. More of a big picture approach he anticipates the CDC will also begin to take.
"In pivoting to preparedness for the next surge, or next respiratory pandemic as opposed to predicting the modeling," Dr. Gordon said.
So is COVID going away? No, but now the focus is on how to handle it moving forward.
And as those cases continue to trend down, the Clinic urges us to remember that health care workers haven't slowed down.
So, they're asking people who visit to agree to a form outlining appropriate behavior in the hospital, including being kind to employees.
"So, it feels better, but we still have stressed teams and we understand that our community is under a lot of stress, not only from the virus, but from everything else going on," Jurecko said.
Cleveland Clinic anticipates guests will be required to mask up for the foreseeable future, but they have expanded the number of visitors permitted for a patient to two now that the omicron surge is over in Northeast Ohio.
Related Stories: