Emergency rooms seeing increase in both COVID patients and those who suspect they have it

SAN ANTONIO - Local hospitals say they've seen an increase in COVID-19 patients driving themselves to the hospital, or having a family member drop them off.

Others with more serious complications are being taken by ambulance.

We talked with emergency room doctors about the disturbing trend.

During the past two weeks, emergency room doctors have seen an increase of patients - those who haven't been diagnosed with COVID-19 but are experiencing symptoms.

"Who are unaware of what's going on so they want to be checked out," said Ralph Riviello, Chairman of ER Medicine at University Hospital System & UT Health San Antonio.

They’re also seeing patients who have previously tested positive.

"And their coming in because they're having worsening symptoms," Riviello said.

We checked with emergency room physicians at three area hospitals; including Baptist and University Health Systems, and CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Medical Center.

They say 70 percent of patients seen in the emergency room are for COVID-related symptoms.

"Most of the patients are having symptoms of fever, chills, body aches," said Dr. Corey Harrison with CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Medical Center.

Riviello said, "Cough, loss of taste, loss of smell, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea."

But not all require emergency room care.

Tuesday, the San Antonio Fire Department and EMS agencies throughout Bexar County responded to a total of 97 calls for suspected COVID patients.

Sixty-four were sick enough to be taken to area emergency rooms.

Since the start of the pandemic, there have been a total of 2,907 calls, 1,629 required emergency room care.

"I work at different hospitals and we're holding patients in emergency rooms for hours, sometimes days because there are not hospital beds available," said Dr. Nayeli Rodulfo with Baptist Health Systems.

City and county leaders have been working proactively to coordinate a plan to deal with the growing demand for hospital beds.

They say you can help by avoiding emergency rooms.

"If you're not having any symptoms it doesn't warrant you coming to the emergency room and just making the system busy because we have so many other patients who need emergency attention," Riviello said.

Harrison said, “Most of the treatments that have been developed have been developed for the critically ill patients who are on ventilators or require oxygen support. So if you have mild symptoms there's really not a lot of benefit to coming to the emergency room department."

Doctors we talked to say, if you suspect you have COVID and have mild symptoms contact your primary care physician or any of a number of area clinics for testing. They say to avoid flooding emergency rooms.