In the ICU, doctors see rise in Covid cases but less severe disease

Who is hospitalized now with Covid? The elderly and people with weakened immune systems, doctors say. Cases aren't are severe as they were earlier in the pandemic.

For more than three years, Dr. Christopher Ohl has been treating Covid patients in the intensive care unit at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist in North Carolina.

Lately, however, he's noticed a change: His patients are nowhere as sick as they used to be.

"What we're seeing now is our patients who are admitted with Covid pneumonia in the ICU tend to respond faster to treatment, they're less likely to die, and they're more likely to get discharged earlier," said Ohl, also a professor of infectious diseases at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "They don't seem to be as sick with it as they were two years ago."

It's a trend other ICU doctors have noticed, too, even as Covid hospitalizations continue to rise.

Severe complications and extended hospital stays are less common now compared with several years ago, said Dr. Cameron Wolfe, an infectious disease expert and an associate professor of medicine at the Duke University School of Medicine.