COVID-19 hospitalizations have fallen to their lowest levels since the early days of the pandemic, providing healthcare workers and patients a much-needed break after a surge in omicron.

The number of patients hospitalized with the virus has dropped by more than 90% in more than two months, with some hospitals without a single COVID-19 patient in intensive care for days for the first time since early 2020.

The freed beds are expected to help U.S. hospitals retain exhausted staff, treat non-COVID-19 patients faster and reduce ballooning costs. More family members can visit loved ones. Doctors hope to see the downward trend in pediatric visits, annual checkups and cancer screenings corrected.

“We should all smile that the number of people hospitalized with COVID and the number of people getting COVID in intensive care units is at this low point,” said Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida.

But, he said, the country “has paid a high price to get to this stage. … A lot of people got sick, and a lot of people died.”

Hospitalizations are now at their lowest point since summer 2020, when comprehensive national data first emerged. The national average of hospitalizations for COVID-19 fell to 11,860 last week, the lowest level since 2020 and a sharp drop from a peak of more than 145,000 in mid-January. The previous low was 12,041 last June, before the delta variant took effect.

An optimistic trend is also evident in the number of ICU patients, which has now fallen to less than 2,000, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“We’re starting to catch our breath,” said Dr. Jeffrey Weinstein, patient safety officer for the Kettering Health Hospital System in western Ohio.

Back in January, COVID-19 patients accounted for 30 percent of Kettering Health’s nearly 1,600 hospital beds, Weinstein said. Eight hospitals in Kettering are now seeing an average of two to three COVID-19 admissions a day – sometimes zero.

While Salemi agrees that this is a good time to give a weary health care system a breather, he cautions that the public health community needs to pay close attention to the BA.2 subvariable of omicron. It is driving a rise in hospitalizations in the U.K., which are now estimated to account for more than half of U.S. infections.

“We may be missing a real infection now more than at any time during the pandemic,” Salemi said.

At least for now, many hospitals are noting the numbers are low.

On Thursday, UC Davis Health tweeted that for the first time in two years, its intensive care unit was free of COVID-19 patients for two consecutive days.

“The first COVID-19 patient to our ICU arrived in February 2020, and the ward has treated at least one positive individual per day for at least 761 consecutive days since then,” the hospital system said.

Chief Nursing and Patient Care Services Officer Toby Marsh said in a statement they hoped the numbers “indicate ongoing change”.

In Philadelphia, patients are spending less time at Temple University Health System because there is no longer a backlog of MRIs, CT scans and lab tests, said chief medical officer Dr. Tony Reed.

There were six adult COVID-19 patients at Temple Health’s three hospitals on Thursday, possibly the lowest patient count since March 2020, Reid said.

During the omicron surge, patients waited up to 22 hours for a routine MRI, which is usually done within 12 hours. Longer wait times can affect people who have difficulty walking — and can be painful — because a herniated disc pinches their sciatic nerve, for example.

“Nobody wants to spend an extra day in the hospital,” Reed said.

Empty beds also help patients in rural areas, said Jay Anderson, chief operating officer at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus. During the surge, hospitals were challenged to accept people from community hospitals who needed higher-level care for brain tumors, terminal cancer and stroke. Now that burden is being lifted.

Tourists will also return more from Tuesday. Ohio State will no longer limit patients to two designated guests who can only stay alone.

“Patients recover better when they have access to family and loved ones,” Anderson said.

In some areas, doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists have also received much-needed breaks.

In Colorado, Dr. Michelle Barron said the persistently low rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations made staff laugh, though she double-checked the numbers to make sure they were actually correct.

“I had a moment like, oh, this is awesome,” said Barron, medical director of infection prevention and control at the University of Colorado Hospital. “It doesn’t feel real.”

UCHealth has eased some restrictions, including waiving testing requirements for anyone entering the facility. While this has created some anxiety among employees, Barron said the numbers haven’t skyrocketed.

“I think some people have started taking time off without feeling guilty,” she said. “I was on spring break with my kids and I was happy where I went, and oh my god, that’s actually pretty normal.”

Dr. Mike Hooper, chief medical officer at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in southeastern Virginia, said the surge in omicron has strained staff, but also at home.

“It’s stressful to visit your family in the store,” Hooper said. “We all hope that some ‘return to normalcy’ will help people cope with the inherent stress of being part of a healthcare team.”

But the drop in hospitalizations doesn’t mean hospitals are empty, said Dr. Frank Johnson, chief medical officer for the St. Luke’s Health System in Idaho.

Some measures – such as wearing masks in some cases – will remain in place.

“I don’t know when we’re going to go back to the old practice of wearing masks in the clinical setting,” Johnson said. “We’ve seen some benefit in reducing the number of other viral infections.”

At the same time, the public health community is paying close attention to the BA.2 subvariant of omicron.

Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, said the increase in home testing meant the official coronavirus case count did not include more results. Therefore, wastewater monitoring will be an early warning sign to watch, he said.

“BA.2 is here,” he said. “We don’t have to look that far in the rearview mirror to know that things are going to change very quickly. We saw what happened to the delta. We saw what happened to the omicron… We don’t want to wait until we see a lot of people in the hospital Take action.”