As temperatures surge in Virginia during the summer, so do trips to the emergency room.
Each day this July, at least a dozen Virginians visited a local urgent care or emergency department suffering from heat-related illness. On most days, that number was double, triple or even nine times as high.
“This is definitely affecting Virginians and people should really take it seriously when the weather is getting really hot,” said Meredith Davis, an epidemiologist with the Virginia Department of Health.
The department tracks heat-related hospital visits each year, focusing on the hottest period from May through September.
More than 400 people have visited emergency or urgent care centers in the greater Hampton Roads region this summer.
That’s about a quarter of all such visits in the state.
Heat-related illness refers to a range of issues that happen when the body is overheated and can’t properly cool itself.
Symptoms can be mild, like muscle cramps or heat rash. In other cases, extreme heat can be life-threatening.
Dr. Lewis Siegel, chair of the emergency medicine department at Chesapeake Regional Medical Center, said that includes heat stroke.
When temperatures get high enough in the body, they can start to impact the person’s organs. Dehydration can lead to kidney failure. The most severe form attacks the brain.
“In the simplest way of looking at it, the brain gets cooked and brain tissue can get affected,” Siegel said. “It can be tragic and fatal.”
Heat is often cited as the deadliest weather-related event in the U.S. each year. Last year, then-White House national climate advisor Gina McCarthy called it a “silent killer.”
Since 2007, a total of 135 people in Virginia have died specifically from hyperthermia —heat stroke or heat fatigue — according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia. The peak was 21 in 2012.
