Even as the city’s top doctor shared optimism about the state of the pandemic, Northwestern Medicine clinicians warned the public to be wary of the disease’s lingering effects.
The directors of the hospital system’s Comprehensive COVID-19 Center released a study Thursday on “long COVID” symptoms. It showed thousands of patients have suffered from a wide array of serious medical issues that highlight the illness’s lasting harm and the importance of a treating long COVID with a multidisciplinary approach, they said.
Tuesday marked two months since the federal and state governments’ pandemic public health emergency was declared over, Chicago Department of Public Health director Dr. Allison Arwady noted in a livestream earlier in the week.
“And we continue to do very well,” she said.
The city is seeing just over three COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals each day, Arwady said.
“So, not over,” she said. “But that is down. It continues, really week after week. We are breaking records for the lowest number of hospitalizations.”
Both Illinois and Chicago are below the similarly declining national average in hospital admissions, Arwady said. The percentages of Chicago hospital beds and emergency room visits being used to treat COVID-19 patients are also at or near their lowest levels, she added.
The city is now seeing below one death per day, another pandemic low, she said. Over 8,000 Chicagoans have died from COVID-19, city data shows.
“We are at the lowest levels of COVID that we have seen here in Chicago. So your risk is the lowest that it has been,” Arwady said. “But … it’s not zero.”
However, even as hospital admissions go down, the leaders of Northwestern Medicine’s Comprehensive COVID-19 Center said their…
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