BUFFALO, N.Y. — COVID hospitalizations remain a serious concern across New York, especially with the omicron variant spreading like wildfire.
Medical experts and leaders alike are still working hard to convey just how serious the current climate is, while many are indeed battling COVID fatigue.
On Saturday, the New York State Department of Health released new data. Daily hospitalizations hit a new high of 574 people. The previous high, of 548 people, peaked around the first week of December 2020.
In Western New York, like in many regions across the state, hospitals remain tight for space with many working under exhausting stressful conditions with limited staff.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz took to Twitter over the weekend expressing his thoughts in a series of tweets, saying:
Two doctors took to "Meet The Press" early Sunday to share their thoughts on where we are in this fight and how much farther we have to go.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is Vice Provost at the University of Pennsylvania and tells Chuck Todd, "We're still in the pandemic stage. If you've got 1,500 people a day dying from this disease, it's still a pandemic, and Omicron is spreading. We think that over the course of 2022, we will get to an endemic stage."
An endemic being, by definition, a disease outbreak that is consistently present but limited to a particular region.
Dr. Celine Gounder is a professor at NYU's Grossman School of Medicine and took to "Meet The Press" to share her own thoughts. Saying, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could be doing a better job when it comes to consistent messaging, all in all, we all could be doing a better job when it comes to how this pandemic is currently being handled, especially as it relates to COVID transmission.
"Yes, the CDC could've done a better job. But there are many other parties that contributed to this issue. You have, first of all, the FDA. Under both the Trump and Biden administrations, has really dragged its feet on authorizing these rapid antigen tests for the purpose of assessing, are people contagious or not? Many of us have been advocating for that," Dr. Gounder says.
When asked about rapid antigen tests Dr. Gounder explained, "we have real-world evidence that the rapid antigen tests are a good measure of contagiousness. But the FDA has not authorized them for that purpose. And just like with vaccines, the FDA has to authorize, then the CDC makes recommendations about their use."
At the moment, there is no saying if and when the FDA will do so.