COVID hospitalizations continue to drop in NC despite virus outbreaks among students
The number of hospital patients being treated for COVID-19 in North Carolina continues to drop, despite a growing number of clusters of coronavirus among university students in the Triangle and elsewhere.
Doctors say that’s largely because young people are less likely to have the underlying health problems that come with age and that are more likely to cause a person with COVID-19 to end up in a hospital.
“We’re seeing a younger group becoming infected, and those younger individuals tend not to require hospitalization,” said Dr. William Fischer, a viral disease specialist at UNC Health in Chapel Hill. “And that’s great for them, because they’re not as sick. But the more that we have positive people interacting with others, the greater chance we have of community transmission.”
Public health officials and hospitals are watching for signs that young people, many of whom may carry the virus without showing any signs of illness, will spread the disease to others who are more likely to get seriously ill, said Dr. Cameron Wolfe, an infectious disease specialist at Duke University Health System.
“What will be important is whether those positive cases cause secondary infections in more at-risk groups — such as parents or grandparents, janitorial staff, etc.,” Wolfe wrote in an email. “In those cases, the risk of getting sick enough to need the hospital goes up again. So far we have NOT seen that sort of spill-over event to any great extent.”
On Friday, 955 people in North Carolina were being treated in a hospital for COVID-19, according to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. That daily census peaked at over 1,200 a day in late July and has been below 1,000 since Aug. 20.
That decline has not reversed despite an uptick in new cases in mid-August tied to the opening of university campuses. In Chapel Hill, 924 students have tested positive for coronavirus at UNC since Aug. 10, according to the university. UNC Medical Center now has about 35 COVID patients, down from about 45 around the beginning of August, according to spokesman Alan Wolf.
“It’s trended down a little during the past few weeks, but remains relatively high,” Wolf wrote in an email. “So far, we haven’t seen any big surge related to younger patients (as in, college age) at UNC Medical Center.”
The increase in coronavirus among university students has added to an overall rise in the portion of cases among young people in North Carolina. In late May and early June, about 9% of reported cases statewide were among people age 18 to 24, according to DHHS. Now, that age group accounts for about 16% of cases.
Meanwhile, the portion of cases among people age 65 and older — the group mostly likely to become seriously ill — has declined from 19% in late May to 13% now.
At WakeMed in Raleigh, the number of COVID patients has declined as much as 60% since its peak in mid-July and has remained steady the last couple of weeks, said Dr. Chris DeRienzo, the health system’s chief medical officer. DeRienzo says that apart from the clusters at universities, North Carolina has seen the benefits of practices such as physical distancing, wearing masks and washing hands that most people have adopted.
“We need to be very, very mindful as a community to not stop the things that are working,” he said in an interview. “We can’t stop respecting the power of this virus to rapidly spread.”
DeRienzo said the next test for hospitals may be the flu season, which almost always sends large numbers of people to the hospital each fall and winter. Some epidemiologists say the steps people take to keep from spreading coronavirus may reduce the spread of flu viruses as well, but DeRienzo says that’s far from certain.
Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is urging Americans to get a flu shot to try to ward off what could be “the worst fall, from a public health perspective, we’ve ever had.” The CDC has purchased an extra 10 million doses of flu vaccine this year in hopes people heed warnings to get one. The best time to get a shot, according to the CDC, is in September or October.
“It’s more important this year than any year I have been alive to get a flu shot,” DeRienzo said. “The more we can do to reduce the flu burden at the beginning of the season, the better chance we have to ride the way through to the end.”
This story was originally published September 6, 2020 at 5:30 AM with the headline "COVID hospitalizations continue to drop in NC despite virus outbreaks among students."
