ATLANTA — In a rare move, six major health care systems in Atlanta released a joint statement begging the public to seek COVID-19 testing outside of their facilities.
The Georgia Department of Health released a similar statement asking Georgians to only go to hospital emergency rooms for COVID testing if their symptoms are severe.
Backing up those pleas, some ER doctors told 11Alive that emergency departments have turned into testing sites overnight.
“The emergency room has become a major area of triage just to get a test," said ER Dr. Mehrdod Ehteshami.
Dr. Ehteshami says the issue is causing some patients in need of immediate emergency care to wait under critical delays.
“The scariest part is probably that when you have a marked increase in people utilizing resources – it means that people who need the resources are unable to get them," added Dr. Ehteshami.
The doctor said that the Omicron variant is impacting ERs like no other variant has.
"The first surge last year was really scary because we didn’t have the vaccine at the time. Delta was bad because of the morbidity we saw with it. Omicron is scary because of how contagious it is," said Dr. Ehteshami.
The concern about emergency room crowding comes as Georgia reported a record new case total on Thursday, the second day in a row this week with a new record.
The state has also reported a spike in hospitalizations in the last few days, up to 2,800 on Thursday. While that's still well below the record of about 6,000 the state reported during the Delta surge back in September, it's an increase of roughly 1,200 in just the last four days.
Late Wednesday, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory Healthcare, Grady Health System, Northeast Georgia Health System, Piedmont Healthcare and Wellstar Health System signed a group statement saying they were experiencing staggering surges in adults and children with COVID-19 symptoms and diagnoses.
In the statement, officials said that while they have mitigating strategies in place to handle overcrowding, they're at a point where they need the public's help in minimizing the strain.