ATLANTA — Georgia is finally seeing some much needed good news related to the pandemic. COVID-19 numbers are trending in the right direction and it's really starting to show in hospitals.
Healthcare workers are cautiously optimistic, though. That's because according to Grady Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Robert Jansen, hospitals have been in this same position four times before.
"Unfortunately, we've been there before, right? We've seen peaks and then valleys," he said. "All that's determined by how many people are immunized and how many people have been previously infected."
The Peach State is in one of those valleys right now, as numbers trend downwards.
“There is a little bit of a sigh of relief and hope that this trend will continue," he said.
But history can repeat itself, especially in a pandemic that has seen surges with COVID-19 variants.
RELATED: Why do COVID cases come in waves?
"The future really is going to be determined by how much immunization there is in the community," Dr. Jansen said. "And, you know, the next variant, I hate to say it that way, but we've gotten accustomed to the fact that there's going to be other variants, how virulent that is, how infectious that is, and how much that will then infect people who have not been vaccinated and not been infected in the past. Then the resistance that you get from vaccination and natural immunity from previous infections" matters too.
As of Tuesday, Jansen said Grady had 46 patients with the virus out of about 500 total patients (including medical and surgical patients). So that's about 10% of all patients there, similar to what other counties in the metro-Atlanta area are seeing.
“Back in June, we got down to seven patients to put this in perspective, seven COVID patients. So we're a long way from that. But things are getting better," he reassured.
Also as of Tuesday, 11% of patients in Georgia hospitals have COVID-19. Just last month, that number was nearly three times higher, at about 30% capacity.
Cobb County is right at the state's average of 11% COVID-19 patients in hospitals, while Fulton, Gwinnett and DeKalb sit at about 10% Tuesday afternoon.
"I don't want to be a pessimist, so I'm going to be optimistic and think that things will continue to improve and maybe the next time we go through this it won't be as bad," he added. "I think it's inevitable we will have more infections because we don't have enough immunity in the in the general population, but hopefully it won't be as bad... we'll have fewer cases and we can only hope this not as severe."
Still, 85% of ICU beds in Georgia are currently in use. But it doesn't matter how low of a valley the state hits, Jansen said the lasting effect of the pandemic in hospitals will be felt for a long time.
“Even though we are taking a big sigh, we have fewer staff," he said. "We have to take care of all the patients that we still have, with fewer resources."
While Jansen said the decrease in COVID numbers has to do partly to vaccination rates and natural immunity, Public Health Microbiologist Dr. Amber Schmidtke, who has been following COVID-19 statistics closely, said some of the decline is also due to deaths among those in the ICU.
She said the survival rate in ICU's right now is just over 50%, which is why it's important people continue to get vaccinated.
"COVID isn't going to go away," said Jansen. "The numbers hopefully will continue to come down but it's not going to disappear. We've proven that, we hoped it wouldn't happen. So, the more people who will get vaccinated who have not thus far been vaccinated, the better off all of us will be."