The Omicron wave strained the New York City’s hospitals

"The Omicron wave nonetheless strained the New York City’s hospitals, which still proved resilient because health care workers, despite widespread exhaustion, had learned from hard-won experience in 2020 how to limit severe illness and death, officials and workers said.

They knew to avoid intubating patients when possible, having learned that many people who are put on ventilators never come off. Instead, they relied on less invasive ways of providing supplemental oxygen and made better use of high-dose steroids to control inflammation. 

Hospital administrators activated emergency plans to open surge units, and consulted one another regularly to share advice or ask for reinforcements.

While Omicron often causes milder illness in adults, it sometimes has a more severe impact on children, particularly those too young to be vaccinated, creating new challenges for health care workers. Hospitalization rates for children rose more quickly than in previous waves, mirroring trends elsewhere.

“Our hospitals did come under strain, particularly emergency departments, and — a little bit less so — our intensive care units compared to prior surges,” said Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, the city’s health commissioner. “But they held the line.”

Still, the Omicron variant showed that hospitals remained vulnerable to being overwhelmed by a surge in patients — and that help is not always quick to arrive. A voluntary system that encourages better-financed hospitals to take patients from poorer ones resulted in some transfers, but too few to equalize conditions."