Ohio Doctors Share Concerns with COVID-19 Spike
At the Monday, November 23 Ohio Coronavirus Press Conference, several Ohio doctors shared concerns with COVID-19 spiking in Ohio. A graph was shown showing that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Ohio is rising. 4,358 people are now hospitalized in Ohio, as of Monday.
Dr. Robert Wyllie of the Cleveland Clinic said, “My biggest concern today is that at the Cleveland Clinic we have 970 caregivers out because they are either on quarantine or they have active COVID infections. They are not catching it in the hospital, they are getting it in the community. Because of this, we have to take those who would have been doing elective surgeries and staff them instead in inpatient care. We need your help to prevent our caregivers from being sick and off work.”
Dr. Andy Thomas of the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center said, “We can’t sound the alarm bell loud enough for people in Ohio to change their behavior. With Thanksgiving coming up, keep within your bubble. If you have family coming over, hopefully they’ve been quarantining for 14 days. In the next few weeks, every hospital in the state is going to have to make tough decisions about how it will staff its beds, what elective procedures they’ll have to postpone, even potentially postponing ambulatory and outpatient office visits.”
Dr. Richard Lofgren of UC Health said, “The growth in hospitalizations exponential. We’re not planning for the surge – the surge is here. We’re approaching the point where the influx of COVID patients will displace non-COVID care. We are responding to the surge, but as the surge increases, we’ll need to make more decisions about how we triage and how we take care of patients appropriately.”
Rhonda Lehman of Mercy Health said, “The inpatient side is filling up faster than we’re able to discharge patients.”
On Monday in Ohio, 11,034 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed and 282 people were hospitalized.
Some good news was also brought up, Governor Mike DeWine said, “Good news today on the vaccine front AstraZeneca’s vaccine is up to 90% effective. This comes on the heels of recent news of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines also having very high effectiveness rates. Later this afternoon, I will be joining the White House for an update on the COVID-19 vaccine. I will assure them that distribution planning is well underway in Ohio.”