ICYMI on KPBS Roundtable: Local health experts weigh in on what they are seeing at area hospitals with COVID-19, RSV and the flu.
S1: The holidays are here again , and with it comes another wave of COVID. I'm Matt Hoffman and this is KPBS roundtable. Rinse and repeat. San Diego hospitals are beginning to fill up again as we approach winter. Wastewater shows us that the amount of COVID 19 in the community is once again sharply increasing. But this year , there's another factor. After nearly two seasons of almost no flu , it's back in a big way in San Diego.
S1: And when you say delayed care , is that something that maybe wasn't an issue before and now it's like emergent ? Sure. S1: And we know that there's surge tests that are set up across the county , even if they're not being used right now. And if you look at the state data in terms of hospitalizations , we're tracking almost the same as last year and last winter. That is the peak was about 1300 people admitted throughout the county.
S1: And , Dr. McDonald , we know that just 18% of San Diegans have opted for these recently released Bivalent boosters. They were designed to go after the virus's latest variants. S1: And Bev , was that monoclonal antibody treatment that we were talking about ? You're listening to KPBS roundtable. And this week , we're hearing from some local health experts on the local respiratory virus situation. Our guests are Dr. Chris Longhurst from UC San Diego Health. Dr. Williams Singh from Kaiser Permanente , San Diego. And Dr. Eric McDonald from the county Health Department is here with us. Dr.
S3: I agree with that. And I would add in that when we look at our mortality rate and case fatality ratio over the last three years , which we've been doing recently , we're seeing that drop year by year. And so the likelihood of going to the intensive care unit or then subsequently dying has dropped significantly for a variety of reasons. It could be partly to the variant , but it's certainly credit to the vaccinations monoclonal antibodies.
S4: But I think that what I like to do is sort of go upstream a little bit and talk about how. We can do things to prevent actually arriving in the hospital in the first place. And so I think. Number one , you can get to buy valent vaccine. But number two , if you do have symptoms , you should have a plan to get tested. And if you do get tested , you can be treated actually earlier and the earlier you're treated , the less likely you are to have a bad outcome.
S1: Do we know if that's because staff are getting sick like they were before ? I remember the conversation with Scripps Health chief medical officer. She said that some of their staff , their kids were getting sick and they were having to go home with them.
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