GREEN BAY, Wis. (NBC 26) — Representatives on behalf of Aurora Baycare, Bellin Health, HSHS St. Vincent and HSHS St. Mary's hospitals have written a letter to the Green Bay community urging people to get vaccinated, boosted, and wear masks as Omicron cases rise before the holiday break.
According to DHS, 97.4% of hospital beds and 98% of ICU beds in the Fox Valley were taken as of December 21. 77.8% of hospitals in the Fox Valley region were at their peak capacity. Statewide, 93% of total hospital beds were occupied and 96.5% of ICU beds were used on December 21.
"I think the biggest challenge we've had over the last few months is the amount of misinformation that patients have. And it's a bit challenging to see and sort of people actually see what COVID-19 does to someone if they're going to get really sick with it, and sort of seeing that world that they as they understood it sort of come crashing down on them," Dr. Brad Burmeister of Bellin Health's emergency department said. "I think that's the most challenging thing at this part is you know, there's really two groups of people providing information. There's a health community and there's other folks who identify themselves as healthcare people that are really harming society in our community, and that's having significant downstream consequences where it doesn't only harm people but harms entire communities and harms people's businesses in their livelihoods. And I think that's just the heartbreaking thing at this point."
On December 22, DHS tallied 2,043 positive tests and 25,611 negative tests, averaging a 12.7% positive rate over the previous 7 days.
The CDC announced that Omicron was the predominant strain amongst new cases nationwide on December 20.
"As we move into this holiday season, we were hopeful that we were going to be in a much better position than we currently are. You know, we have a lot of uncertainty in our entire really global community at this point with the Omicron variant. You know, the Omicron variant was first identified just over a month ago, and we are still getting data on exactly what Omicron is going to mean for people," Dr. Burmeister said. There's some evidence that people who are infected with Omicron may not have as severe symptoms, but we need to balance that with that Omicron seems to be significantly more able to spread to people. And you know, that sort of multiplication that happens there. So if one variable doesn't decrease, as much as the other one increases, we still will see increased volumes of people getting sick and needing hospitalization."
At the time of publication, DHS considers every county in Wisconsin to have the highest category of transmission that they track, meaning more than 100 total confirmed and/or probable cases per 100,000 people reported in the previous week.
