Savannah hospitals seeing increase in COVID cases

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - COVID cases on a recent rise for the first time in months in our area.

Doctors say symptoms aren’t severe but there are several things you need to know about the recent uptick.

“We’re seeing more people with COVID and they’re not as sick as they are fatigued.”

That tiredness is one a few symptoms patients with COVID are feeling this go around.

Doctors at Memorial, St. Joseph’s and Candler say hospitalizations are rising.

At Memorial, 14 people are in the hospital with COVID. Two of them are in the ICU.

“The testing kits are sold out in a lot of pharmacies and that’s a bit of a worrisome thing for us. Again, we had eight people a few days ago and then nine people and now we have 14 people in our hospital,” Dr. Tim Connelly said.

St. Josephs and Candler Hospitals have seen a 14 percent increase in COVID emergency room visits.

“It’s more of a cold than anything else, a sore throat, little bit of a cough, low grade fevers. Healthy people have done well with it. As always our vulnerable population gets a bit more sick which is why we should be very careful and make sure that if you’re vulnerable, you do the same things we did before,” Dr. John Rowlett said.

Which are washing your hands, masking up when needed and staying away from infectious areas, according to Dr. John Rowlett.

“There are still some therapies we are recommending so if people do test positive, they should check with their physician to see if whether or not they qualify for one of the other medicines.”

The strains going around are the most recent variations of COVID, which are more contagious according to doctors.

As far as protection, Dr. Connelly says if you don’t have the recent bivalent booster, you likely aren’t protected from COVID no matter how healthy you are.

Dr. Rowlett also recommends you stay up to date on vaccines.

“Vaccine recommendation hasn’t changed. Everyone should be immunized. The current strain probably isn’t covered as well be the vaccine as we’d like it to be.”

He says he expects the vaccine will see constant updates. Doctors say it’s best to talk to your physician about how often to get vaccinated.

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