(INDIANAPOLIS) – Doctors have learned more about how to treat COVID-19 since the pandemic started. But if you land in the hospital, it still takes close to two weeks to get out.
In the first three months of the pandemic, the average hospital stay with COVID was 14 days. The average since is down to 11.
Community Health Network chief medical officer Ram Yeleti says doctors discovered COVID-19 works differently from pneumonia or flu, where a patient who’s not getting enough oxygen needs to go on a ventilator quickly to avoid a rapid decline. Yeleti says putting a patient on high-flow oxygen instead can allow the lungs to do the work, and allow more patients to continue their recovery at home.
But Yeleti cautions there haven’t been any new COVID treatments since the vaccine arrived in December. He says the best treatment is still to get vaccinated to avoid the hospital in the first place.
More than two-thousand Hoosiers are hospitalized right now with COVID-19, the most since January and double the number just 19 days ago.
