UMass Memorial CEO: Peak of hospitalizations coming by second week of January

WORCESTER — The president and CEO of UMass Memorial Health in Worcester says hospitals in central Massachusetts and across the state are dealing with a surge in COVID-19 cases that is only expected to get worse in the weeks ahead.

Dr. Eric Dickson told Boston 25 Morning News on Wednesday that the UMass Memorial trauma center “is running at about 110 percent of its bed capacity. That means of the 400 beds that exist for med/surgical purposes, we have 440 patients that need them, so we have 40 patients waiting in the emergency department for beds.”

Dr. Dickson also said “We have about 10 ICU patients that don’t have a bed yet, and that kind of stress that we’re feeling here in Worcester is across the state, with really all projections saying that about the second week of January you’re going to see the peak in hospitalizations, and we’re just all holding on to see just how bad that’s going to be.”

“Omicron is coming and pushing out the delta variant at an alarming rate,” said Dickson. “We anticipate that almost 100% of new cases will be omicron by next week and it’s clearly much more infectious than Delta. What we don’t know is how virulent it is in terms of causing the severity of disease. We believe it is less virulent and we believe a smaller percentage of patients infected with it will end up in the hospital. We just don’t know exactly what that number is. So, it’s really hard for us to predict just what the demand on hospitals are going to be.”

Dr. Dickson is also urging people to get their boosters.

“Fully vaccinated really now has to mean you have received both your primary shots, and when you are due, your booster, said Dickson. “We are seeing a lot of breakthrough cases for people that just got the two primary shots with Pfizer or Moderna, but very few where folks have been boostered. So, the boosters clearly work. They’re especially good in preventing hospitalizations. So get your booster because you don’t want to end up in the hospital with COVID.”

Dr. Dickson tells Boston 25 he’s hopeful this will be the final surge of COVID-19.

“I’d like to believe that this is the last one, said Dickson. “This much more infectious variant that is coming through, that almost everyone is going to get immunized - by getting the vaccine or by getting the COVID infection. Once everyone has some degree of immunity, it’s really going to be hard to have another surge.”

Dickson also says he never thought Massachusetts would see one million confirmed cases of COVID since the pandemic started.

“Absolutely not. We anticipated having achieved herd immunity much sooner when we saw the vaccine coming,” said Dickson. “After that, we thought that the second surge would be the last surge and here we sit now dealing with our third surge of COVID cases which looks to be worse than either of the first two.”

Dr. Dickson also told Boston 25 that be does not think a vaccine for children under the age of 5 will be coming anytime soon.

“I think we’re still quite a ways off for getting a vaccine for children under 5,” said Dickson. “That’s a particularly sensitive age group that you have to have quite robust data to support getting to even an emergency use authorization. And it’s just the willingness of people to enroll children less than 5 into clinical trials makes that even harder to do. So, I don’t think we are going to see a vaccine for children under 5 anytime soon.”

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