-By Alec Pruchnicki, MD
Although the worst of the Covid pandemic is over, during the last few months there has been an increase in what would normally be the winter flu season. During this period roughly 500 deaths a day with Covid as the cause or contributing factor were reported. That’s on a national level. What’s happening on a more grass-roots level?
The Vista on assisted living facility, where I have had my medical practice for almost 20 years, was mostly Covid free until about a month ago. Asingle case occurred in a resident, probably during a visit outside of the facility. After a few days it spread to other apartments on the resident’s floor. Thento another floor. At that point the administration, including myself, decided that the facility should go on lock-down, as it did during the height of the pandemic.
All group activities were stopped, including the use of the dining room. All residents were requested to stay in their individual studio apartments andevery meal and medication was brought to them by the staff. A total of about a dozen residents became infected and exhibited symptoms. Tests were thendone on virtually every resident, sick or not, and about a half dozen had positive tests but no symptoms. Sometimes the rapid nasal swab test gives a false positive reading, but a half dozen is much more than you would expect from inaccurate tests. So, about a third of cases showed no symptoms. Eventually, the cases started to drop to zero and all these restrictions were relaxed.
What was the result of these cases? Most of the effected individuals had mild symptoms no worse than a cold or respiratory virus, and were fine in a fewdays. Several residents were sick enough to go to the emergency room but it was unclear if it was Covid alone, or Covid superimposed on their previousmedical conditions. But, there were no deaths, no permanent nursing home placements from Covid related illness and, in general, the entire outbreak washandled relatively easily.
Why so easy? Isolation and social distancing helped stop the spread, but the mildness of the cases, and the asymptomatic cases, could probably all beattributed to vaccinations. Every single person had been vaccinated, almost all got their first and second boosters, and many, possibly a majority, had their third booster. This third booster was specifically designed for the new Omicron variant going around and it seemed to work very well, as far as we can tell fromthis small group of cases. A handful of cases in one facility don’t amount to a hill of beans in a crazy world of epidemics (I love to steal and then paraphrase lines from the movie Casablanca) but there is something that the nation can learn from outbreaks like ours. National statistics are showing that ,in general, regions of the country and populations with the lowest vaccination rates have the highest Covid death rates. Or, inversely, the regions andpopulations with the highest vaccinations have the lowest death rates. This is a lesson we should remember when the next epidemic occurs. And, there will eventually be another one.
