Story at a glance
- “The high volume of these numbers is overwhelming the system,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said during a news briefing Monday.
- Richard Lofgren, president and CEO of the University of Cincinnati UC Health system, warned the hospital system is nearing the point where the influx of coronavirus patients will “displace non-COVID care.”
- Cleveland Clinic Chief of Medical Operations Robert Wyllie said the hospital is short nearly 1,000 health care workers because they are either infected with COVID-19 or are under quarantine, increasing the probability that elective procedures will have to be postponed.
Ohio is dealing with an exponential increase in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations that is threatening the state’s hospital systems.
More than 4,300 people are currently hospitalized across the state with COVID-19 symptoms, including 1,079 patients in the intensive care unit and 573 on ventilators, according to The Covid Tracking Project.
The number of coronavirus hospitalizations has increased nearly 60 percent from just two weeks ago.
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“The high volume of these numbers is overwhelming the system,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said during a news briefing Monday.
“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,” DeWine said.
Richard Lofgren, president and CEO of the University of Cincinnati UC Health system, warned the hospital system is nearing the point where the influx of coronavirus patients will “displace non-COVID care.”
“The growth in hospitalizations is exponential. We’re not planning for the surge – the surge is here,” Lofgren said Monday.
Cleveland Clinic Chief of Medical Operations Robert Wyllie said the hospital is short nearly 1,000 health care workers because they are either under quarantine or infected with COVID-19, increasing the probability that elective procedures will have to be postponed.
Over the past two weeks, the seven-day rolling average of daily new cases across the state has increased from more than 4,400 to more than 7,600, according to The COVID Tracking Project.
On Monday, 11,885 new cases were reported, an additional 282 Ohioans were hospitalized and 24 died.
Ohio has reported more than 363,000 cases and more than 6,000 deaths over the course of the pandemic.
The situation in Ohio comes as the U.S. is experiencing an unprecedented surge in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. The U.S. is reporting an average of more than 167,000 new cases every day and 1,515 deaths. More than 85,000 people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, the most since the pandemic began.
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