COVID hospitalizations are rising again after more than two months of persistently high case rates in the Bay Area and California. But the doctors who treat these patients are seeing consistent indications that for most, the disease is less severe than in earlier surges of the deadly virus that has killed more than a million Americans.
“What we are not seeing is patients like we saw in 2021 and 2020 — someone with no medical issues coming in and requiring oxygen,” said Dr. Errol Ozdalga, a clinical associate professor of medicine at Stanford.
The increase has been much more gradual than during other COVID waves, likely due to widespread vaccination and booster coverage, and improved therapeutics and treatments which prevent some hospitalizations and shorten others. And the hospitalizations now are still well shy of the record 20,000-plus COVID patients in California hospitals during the first winter surge in 2020-21, and less than one-third of the 15,000 hospitalized this past winter.
