Boston ER doctor reports an alarming trend of COVID-19 patients returning to hospital 'sicker' and in need of a ventilator

• Dr. Jon Santiago, an emergency room doctor at Boston Medical Center in Massachusetts, reported that patients who were initially diagnosed with the coronavirus are coming back to the hospital "sicker."
• Santiago reported the alarming trend to local news station WBZ, stating that the patients who come back for a repeat hospitalization often require a ventilator and ICU level care.
• Having coronavirus patients that could need care or ICU beds not once, but twice, could further strain the hospital system, which state officials worry will already be "stretched" by the projected coronavirus cases.
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An emergency room doctor in Boston, Massachusetts has reported an alarming trend amid a surge in coronavirus cases: patients diagnosed with COVID-19 are coming back for repeat hospitalizations.

Dr. Jon Santiago, a physician at Boston Medical Center and state representative, reported to local news station WBZ that COVID-19 patients who tested positive for the novel virus were coming back "sicker" than their first visits. Santiago also said that these individuals often came back to the hospital needing ventilators or ICU-level care.

"Over the last week we've seen an interesting phenomenon where people who've been initially diagnosed a week ago, they're coming back to the hospital sicker and often requiring a ventilator or the ICU," Santiago told WBZ. "That just demonstrates how insidious the virus can be."

Boston Medical Center did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request to confirm the re-hospitalization of COVID-19 patients.

The news comes in the midst of a surge of coronavirus cases in Massachusetts which has the third-largest number of cases in the US. The novel virus has infected 34,402 and killed 1,404 residents in the state, according to data collected by John Hopkins.

Public health officials warned that projections showed that the Bay State could see a surge of the novel virus — and doctors on the frontlines of battling the virus reported feeling like the "uphill" climb of cases.

"It's like riding a bike uphill," Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Ali Raja, told NBC10. "We're feeling the uphill right now. We might not be at the top, or near the top, but we're definitely higher than we were before."

Santiago told WBZ that Boston Medical Center briefly ran out of ICU beds last week due to a wave of hospital admissions, but that things have since settled down. Although the state has taken measures to increase its care capacity through surge planning and building field hospitals for less sick patients, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker warned that the Bay State's hospital system would be "stretched like never before," Boston.com reported

"Capacity is manageable right now," Baker said. "But what we are seeing in the models predicts a big increase in the weeks ahead, and that means our health care system will be stretched like never before."

According to figures released by Gov. Charlie Baker's administration, about 55 percent of hospital beds in the state are currently filled. Having coronavirus patients that could need care or ICU beds not once, but twice, could further strain the hospital system, which state officials worry will already be "stretched" by the projected coronavirus cases.

However, a recent Massachusetts General Hospital study in Chelsea, Massachusetts, which has become the epicenter for the coronavirus in the state, suggests that the state may be under-counting its confirmed cases. Physicians with the hospital randomly tested 200 Chelsea residents who appeared healthy on the street and nearly one-third of the participants tested positive for antibodies linked to COVID-19, the Boston Globe reported.

"We've long thought that the reported numbers are vastly under-counting what the actual infection is," Thomas Ambrosino, Chelsea's city manager, told the Boston Globe. "Those reported numbers are based on positive COVID-19 tests, and we're all aware that a very, very small percentage of people in Chelsea and everywhere are getting COVID-19 tests."