People with flu-like symptoms are streaming into Georgia emergency rooms, state public health officials said Tuesday. There’s still time for vaccinations to make a difference, they stressed.
The three main diseases in the current surge are flu, COVID-19 and a virus called RSV, for Respiratory Syncytial Virus.
“Everyone over age of six months should receive a COVID vaccine — seniors should receive two — as well as a flu vaccine,” State Epidemiologist Cherie Drenzek said. “It is not too late to receive a flu vaccine. Even though we may be peaking or close to peaking, we often have declines and then spring waves as well.”
Drenzek made her remarks in a presentation to the Georgia Department of Public Health’s board meeting Tuesday.
Getting the shots is important, not only to spare one’s own health, but to keep from becoming a spreader to more vulnerable people, Drenzek said.
Hospitals in metro areas often run close to full in normal times, and lately, many are tipped to overflowing. In addition, a handful near Midtown Atlanta have run even more full in the two years since Wellstar Atlanta Medical Center shut down.
On a check of the state’s emergency routing website late Tuesday evening, Grady Memorial Hospital, Northside Atlanta Hospital, Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Arthur M. Blank Hospital, Emory Hillandale Hospital and Emory University Hospital were all so full that they were telling ambulances not to bring patients to their emergency rooms, but to find another hospital.
In the latest DPH reports, flu and COVID-19 are still on the rise in Georgia. Both viruses have effective vaccine booster shots available for most people over 6 months old.
For people over 65, it’s recommended to get two of the COVID-19 booster shots, each six months apart. People over 65 and some other groups can also get an RSV vaccination.
Flu hasn’t killed anyone in Georgia yet this season but COVID-19 has, according to DPH.
“COVID deaths are really at very, very low levels, but it still underscores for us that COVID can, for many people, still be a very, very severe infection,” said Drenzek.
The virus RSV had an unexpectedly strong early surge nationwide and in Georgia, but is now receding here, Drenzek said. She suggested that Georgia’s RSV decline is a preview that it is soon to decline in the rest of the country.
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