The omicron variant of COVID-19 is just a cold. Health care officials have heard that statement from their friends and, on occasion, even their own family members. Dr. Timothy Friel, a Lehigh Valley Health Network infectious disease physician, said Friday, however, that line of thinking is one of the biggest current misconceptions regarding the virus.

“We hear this over and over from the general public,” Friel said. “For some individuals, especially those who’ve been vaccinated, symptoms can be mild and there are even asymptomatic cases. This is absolutely great. For others, however, it can still be severe enough to require hospitalization and lead to devastating consequences.”

Lehigh Valley Health Network experts gathered for a live Facebook discussion Friday afternoon to address the current COVID-19 surge and its effect on hospital and health care systems worldwide.

Friel said LVHN’s Express Care facilities, emergency rooms and testing centers are being pushed to levels never seen before during the pandemic.

“In our Express Cares alone during the last week, we have seen days where we have registered almost 4,000 patients in a single day. We would typically see between 1,000 and 1,200 on busy days before this.”

The pressure on LVHN to keep up is made more difficult, Friel said, by the impact COVID-19 is having on health care workers.

“We have had higher numbers, record numbers of staff who are reporting exposures and actual infections with COVID-19, forcing them to step out of work and remain at home in isolation,” he said. “There has also been record numbers of nurses, respiratory therapists, hospital workers, physicians, and other core essential members of our team, who have been choosing to retire early to take breaks to look for new careers outside of health care, simply because of the relentless challenges that we in health care have faced.”

At LVHN, almost 90% of patients who tested positive for COVID-19 have it listed as their primary diagnosis. Approximately 80% of COVID-positive patients currently in 11 St. Luke’s University Health Network hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey were admitted because of COVID-19, according to an analysis by the network.

The data contradicts the recent public narrative that most hospitalized COVID-19 inpatients tested positive for the coronavirus incidentally only after being admitted to the hospital for other reasons.

“We want to set the record straight,” said Jeffrey Jahre, MD, St. Luke’s senior vice president of Medical and Academic Affairs and section chief emeritus of Infectious Diseases. “St. Luke’s, as a national leader in COVID-19 care, took the initiative to study this issue and share its findings with the public that the omicron variant is indeed a serious health threat. It is putting an enormous strain on country’s public health infrastructure and is disrupting life throughout the nation.”

This week Massachusetts required its hospitals to differentiate between patients they admit primarily for COVID and those admitted for something else, but who ended up testing positive.

Pennsylvania has not issued a similar directive.

“When people are armed with the facts, real facts, they are more likely to take the appropriate steps to protect themselves and our community’s most vulnerable members,” Jahre said.

Currently, St. Luke’s has approximately 400 COVID-positive inpatients, including several dozen in the ICU. More than 1,800 Americans died of COVID-19 on Thursday.

The average for new cases over the last week is 180 per day in Carbon County, 544 per day in Monroe County, 303 per day in Schuylkill County, 1,409 per day in Lehigh County and 1,035 per day in Northampton County.

The average for deaths per day over the last week is one per day in Carbon County, two per day in Monroe County, three per day in Schuylkill County, four per day in Lehigh County and four per day in Northampton County.

Emergency rooms are also cramped for space right now as fewer and fewer people are avoiding seeking routine care like they may have at the outset of the pandemic.

“People are coming to us in never-ending droves while we’re dealing with the brunt of the pandemic,” Dr. Kate Kane, LVHN emergency department physician, said. “You need to make certain that you are truly unable to cope with whatever health issue you have before coming to an emergency room. Certainly please do come if you’re having significant difficulty breathing, chest pain, other serious illness or injury, but I would ask that you not come for mild symptoms or for testing for COVID-19 alone.”

Dr. Jodi Lenko, of LVHN-Hazleton, discussed the popularity of the COVID-19 antigen test kits that can be used at home, noting that they may soon be covered by insurance.

“They are very good in this situation,” Lenko said. “If you have access to these tests, we recommend you use them. If you are sick at home with cold or flu-like symptoms, fevers, aches or pains, and an at-home test comes back positive, please trust the test. You don’t need a PCR test to confirm that you have COVID-19 after you’ve had a positive home test.”

With the rise of the omicron variant, pediatric cases have increased, Dr. Deborah Carter, executive vice chair of Lehigh Valley Reilly Children’s hospital said. Carter attributed some of that to kids getting back to activities and face-to-face school instruction this fall.

“This really did start for us in pediatrics back in the September-October time frame, although it has been significantly worse in just the past month or so,” she said. “We’ve had record numbers of kids getting tested. We actually had our highest amount ever about a week ago of 5,500 kids tested in a week.”

Positivity rates in children are also tremendously high, Carter said. LVHN has had positivity rates over 55% and 60% in the last week.

“This unfortunately has led to more pediatric hospitalizations as well,” Carter said. “So we are seeing more kids hospitalized with a diagnosis of COVID-19 as their primary diagnosis than in the past. We’ve hit a peak number of about 14 patients per day in the hospital systems. Some of those are in the intensive care unit.”

LVHN officials continued to push for vaccinations in children.

“We currently have in our own system,” Carter said, “a vaccination rate of about 20% in the 5- to 11-year-old group. We were hoping to have that much higher, and we’re certainly encouraging folks to continue to come in for those vaccines. It is a very safe vaccine for kids.”