Amid Omicron Surge, Hospitals Emphasize ERs Are 'For Emergencies'

LAKE FOREST, IL — In the early wave of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly two years ago, people shied away from emergency rooms for fear of contracting the new coronavirus.

Back then, ER patient numbers fell sharply. But hospital officials say that has changed amid Illinois' fifth wave of COVID-19 infections.

"Now they are way, way up," said Dr. Michael Bauer, medical director of Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital. "Including coming for milder COVID-type symptoms, sore throats, aches, et cetera, where care could be rendered in a different setting."

Bauer said some patients are seeking evaluations, while others are showing up at the emergency department as a way to get a hard-to-find coronavirus test.

"Emergency rooms are just that, they're for emergencies. They're for urgent, emergent care. They're not for COVID testing. They're not for colds and mild flu-like illnesses or routine type of care," Bauer told Patch.

"That is absolutely contributing to this overburdening and surge that you're seeing," he said, "not just our emergency room at Lake Forest Hospital, but in all of the area hospitals."

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, the rolling average number of patients in hospitals in Region 9 — made up of Lake and McHenry counties — has risen every day for the past three weeks, going from 220 on Dec. 26 to to more than 400 on Wednesday. Twenty-three of the two-county region's 172 intensive care unit beds remain available.

"Those that are unvaccinated and unprotected still are getting sick. We are seeing patients younger and younger, getting those in their 30s and 40s, getting really sick, and then the number of pediatric patients is also way up right now," Bauer said.

Lake Forest Hospital has been operating above 100 percent capacity for the past several weeks, Bauer said. All non-emergency surgeries have been suspended since Dec. 16. And even after reassigning some surgical personnel to handle the influx of patients with COVID-19, he said, there are still "daily shortages in many areas" when it comes to staying staffed.

"Unfortunately, we're all fighting for the same resources, nationally," he said. "Back in the early days of the pandemic, in different times there were different pockets in the country that had surges while others were quiet, and you could get a lot of 'agency' or 'traveling' type nurses. Now, everybody's competing for those same resources."

Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced earlier this week that more than 2,000 health care workers had been sent to Illinois hospitals, with more than 550 health care workers due to arrive next week through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Statewide, there were 7,380 people hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Wednesday, according to IDPH, an all-time record. The number of patients in Illinois ICUs with COVID-19 remains below its peaks from November and May 2020.

Bauer said about a third of the patients at Lake Forest Hospital were there due to COVID-19. But the other two-thirds of patients were also being affected because of the stress on the system.

"It is so unfortunate that it is really affecting those that don't have COVID, in terms of receiving timely care in some instances," he said. "We have had patients that we have not been able to get transferred out as quickly as we would like to, which really is most unfortunate. However, we still continue to take care of everybody that's here."

People who need emergency care should still come to the ER, the medical director said. For coronavirus patients, that means severe or intense chest pain, significant difficulty breathing, poor color, several days of high fever. If a pulse oximeter, which measures the level of oxygen in their blood, shows levels consistently in the low 90s, patients should also seek care.

The health care system also provided a graphic showing what ailments should be treated by immediate care providers and which should be treated at the ER.

While Lake Forest Hospital has not banned visitors outright, it has reduced the number of visitors allowed in certain areas.

"We've needed to reinstitute visitor restrictions in the emergency room area, just because of the crowded conditions and knowing how many people walking through the doors may be carrying omicron and not even know it," Bauer said.

The hospital has also made some permanent changes to its design during the pandemic. It added 12 beds to a former ambulance bay and a dozen more to a former cardio-pulmonary rehabilitation pavilion, and both have remained full for the past 18 months, its medical director said.

When it reaches its surge capacity, some floors are shifted to double occupancy, some hallway spaces are used for patients, and various spaces used for patients before and after surgeries are used to handle the influx. The intensive care unit has also been expanded into the intermediate care level.

"If you are not vaccinated, you are still at risk of getting really sick from this. You are. We're just not seeing it to the same extent that we were before," Bauer said.

"If you are at all eligible to get vaccinated or boosted, do so — plain and simple. We look at all the other treatments that we have, the new antiviral medications, the monoclonal antibodies, so much of that can be prevented by doing the simple thing of getting vaccinated," he said. "They are safe, they are effective, they're doing just what we wanted them to do, which is not necessarily keeping you from getting infected, but keeping you from getting severely ill, hospitalized and dying."

This article originally appeared on the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Patch