Boston hospital reports zero coronavirus patients in ICU for the first time since pandemic began

More than two years after the coronavirus pandemic began to wreak havoc, nurses and doctors at Tufts Medical Center are seeing zero COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit for the first time.

Boston Hospital reported on Thursday that none of the COVID patients were in the ICU. The hospital’s first coronavirus ICU admission was on March 23, 2020 – almost two years from today.

“It’s obviously great that the level of serious illness is down,” said Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician at Tufts Medical Center and a hospital epidemiologist.

“We are in a better place now,” she later added, but warned of the new variants that remain at risk for more cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

In all, there were nine COVID patients at Tufts Medical Center as of Thursday, but none of them were in the ICU. The last time the hospital had less than 10 COVID patients was last summer, before the Delta version.

Then the Omicron version amid the winter COVID hospitalizations increased dramatically. There were more than 70 COVID patients in the hospital at Omicron’s peak.

Zero COVID patients in the hospital’s ICU is far from the peak of 58 patients in ICU two spring ago. There were 88 COVID patients in the hospital at that time.

Doron said a combination of vaccination, boosting, and a significant amount of infection during the omicron wave has brought down virus rates.

“When you have that immune wall from vaccinations and natural immunity, it protects for a period of time,” she said.

Last week across Massachusetts, the number of COVID patients in ICUs fell to their lowest level since the summer. There were 29 patients in the ICU – the lowest since July 22 last year.

As of Thursday, the state Department of Public Health reported 39 patients in the ICU, and 16 patients were currently intubated.

Doron said more treatments are now available to help prevent severe cases.

“We need to make sure that our testing capacity is never disrupted, as it was in January,” she said. “These treatments work better the sooner you take them, so it’s important that people get a diagnosis as soon as possible.”

While Omicron has been hospitalized after wave, cases of the virus surged over the past week across the state. It comes after Boston-area COVID-19 wastewater data climbed up. Epidemiologists warn about the omicron BA.2 “stealth” variant that helped accelerate Europe.

Biobot Analytics, which is tracking virus wastewater, tweeted on Wednesday, “As of March 16, 2022, our nationwide #wastewater #data has increased significantly for the first time since the end of December 2021 – Northeast Region is growing the fastest.”

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