PHILADELPHIA — Two months ago, Geisinger Health was treating 400 COVID-19 patients across its nine Pennsylvania hospitals. After a swift decline following the omicron surge, that number was around 30 in recent days.
“The bad news is that we’ve definitely plateaued,” said chief medical officer Gerald Maloney. The good news: “We’re cautiously optimistic that this time around, if there is an uptick in cases, that many of the cases will not be severe enough to get people into the hospitals and into the ICUs.”
Several weeks into the rise of the BA.2 subvariant, public health predictions that it would not cause a surge in severe illness and hospitalizations seem to be holding true in Pennsylvania, despite upticks in case numbers. Experts have hoped that the level of population immunity after the omicron surge — with most people likely having some protection from a recent infection, vaccination, or both — would head off a more devastating surge.
