Hospitals brace for influx of flu, COVID-19 cases this winter amid staff shortages

Oct. 10 (UPI) -- Hospitals throughout the United States are bracing for a busy winter as rising flu rates and what some doctors call COVID-19 complacency converge on healthcare facilities already stretched to the limit.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says flu rates and other respiratory viruses are already rising in parts of the United States with the CDC reporting a rise in positive flu tests last week.

With COVID-19 restrictions lifted and people back in offices and classrooms, the number of flu cases are expected to skyrocket to pre-pandemic levels, according to the CDC.

"It's very likely that we're going to see influenza roaring back with a vengeance this winter," Dr. Dan Uslan, co-chief infection prevention officer for UCLA Health, told NBC News.

Australia is experiencing its worst flu season in five years, as federal health officials recently warned the United States could get hit just as hard with only 49% of Americans planning to get a flu shot this year, according to a National Foundation for Infectious Diseases survey.

"Data from the Southern Hemisphere are not good," said Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic. "We need to double down on prevention measures," such as physical distancing and masking.

While fewer Americans plan to get a flu shot, only 7.6 million Americans, out of 333 million total, have received the new COVID-19 booster aimed at Omicron that was released last month, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey. The foundation blamed the low numbers on a lack of public awareness about the new shot, after more than 225 million people got the initial COVID-19 vaccine.

"America is not rushing out to get the new booster. Most are only dimly aware of it, which is not surprising in a country that seems to have mostly moved on," KFF President and CEO Drew Altman said in a statement. "The exception may be older folks, who are at great risk and early on are more interested in the new booster."

While the number of COVID-19 cases continues to drop, there are still tens of thousands of new cases being diagnosed every day. And as winter sets in and more people move indoors, the number of respiratory viruses is expected to rise with hospitals ill-equipped to handle a surge.

"If you go around the nation and ask hospitals how busy they are, every single one of them will tell you they're busy," said Dr. Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean at the Emory University School of Medicine.

Front line nurses, burned out during the pandemic, have taken early retirement or quit to go into new lines of work leaving many hospitals struggling to recruit new people.

The number of healthcare workers quitting is 23% higher than when the pandemic began, according to Health System Tracker, which leaves little room to accommodate a large influx of patients.

"There's no excess capacity in hospitals," del Rio said. "Anything that increases the number of patients is going to tip the scales."