Doctors call on Wisconsinites to avoid large Thanksgiving gatherings
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MILWAUKEE (The Journal Times) — This second wave of the coronavirus isn’t like the first, in Wisconsin or across the nation.
“The difference between the first wave and the second wave, the first wave was really concentrated in urban areas. The second wave is urban, suburban, rural. There really is no area of the country that has been spared,” Dr. Robert Citronberg, an infectious disease specialist with Advocate Aurora Health, told reporters during a virtual news conference Monday. “The next 2-3 months are going to be very difficult. Lots of hospitalizations. Lots of deaths.”
Between Sunday and Monday, the number of Wisconsinites hospitalized with COVID-19 rose by 278 patients to a total of 2,274. Over the 48-hour period from 2 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 12 deaths were linked to COVID-19 in Racine County, although the county’s death total (now at 140) has not risen in the two days since.
That’s why the leaders of Advocate Aurora Health are telling Midwesterners they shouldn’t gather for Thanksgiving this year with anyone outside of their immediate households.
“We have advised, along with public health authorities, to cancel Thanksgiving dinners except for those people who already live in your household,” Citronberg said. “Thanksgiving dinners have the potential to be superspreader events. It’s so critically important that we do not do that.”
“Keep it small this year,” added Dr. Mary Beth Kingston, Advocate Aurora’s chief nursing officer. “It’s a real risk to have a large number of people who aren’t in your immediate living situation over for Thanksgiving this year.”
If 15 people in Racine County were to gather, there is a 62% chance that one person in that group will be carrying the coronavirus, according to peer-reviewed, nationwide county-by-county estimates from researchers at the
Georgia Institute of Technology, also known as Georgia Tech. The average Thanksgiving gathering involves 12 people, according to the Pew Research Center.
Citronberg pointed to a well-documented event from over the summer, identified by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where seven people died after a wedding in Maine became a superspreader event. None of the seven who died even attended the wedding. But wedding attendees who contracted COVID passed the virus to those who ended up dying from it.
‘The numbers are devastating right now’
Although Advocate Aurora facilities haven’t needed to deny or limit care to anyone who needs yet due to being overwhelmed, that could happen if there are many Thanksgiving and other holiday superspreader events.
“The numbers are devastating right now,” Citronberg said.
He pointed out that it only took six days for the U.S. coronavirus case total to rise from 10 million to 11 million, from Nov. 9 to Nov. 15, according to Johns Hopkins University. In Wisconsin, it took from March until Sept. 20 for the first 100,000 cases to be reported. As of Monday, Wisconsin’s total has skyrocketed to 316,758, with daily case records being broken several times a week from September through mid-November.
“Our health care system cannot absorb doubling or tripling of those numbers, as might happen if we have many superspreader events arising out of Thanksgiving. The Christmas guidance will probably be about the same,” Citronberg said. “What I’ve been telling people is: Let’s just take a mulligan for 2020 …
“Even if we don’t have a surge after Thanksgiving, it’s still going to be very taxing on our health care system, the sheer number of patients who are infected.”
Dr. Jeff Bahr, Aurora Medical Group’s chief officer, said that Advocate Aurora’s medical centers in Wisconsin and Illinois “have the highest level of inpatients since the beginning of the pandemic, sitting at just over 1,100 patients.”
As of Monday morning, Aurora Medical Center-Burlington had 14 in-house COVID-19 patients. Even though 14 doesn’t appear to be an eye-popping number, Bahr noted that “everything is relative. If you have a large hospital, that number of beds might not seem like a big deal. But in some of our outlying communities, our hospital buildings and capacities are not as large.” Aurora Medical Center-Burlington usually only has 37 staffed beds in total, according to the American Hospital Directory.
“You may have only 14 COVID-positive patients,” Kingston said, “but if the majority of those patients are in the critical care unit and it’s a 12-bed critical care unit, that can quickly tax the resources at the specific site.”
Regarding the limited capacity, “we have surge plans in place for increased patient volume and can flex the space as needed,” LeeAnn Betz, Advocate Aurora System public affairs manager, said in an email.
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