Health experts and hospitals in Marshall County are fearing the worst as we get closer to Thanksgiving.
With the coronavirus pandemic resurging big time throughout the state of Indiana and the rest of the United States, many hospitals are trying to prepare the best they can for a new surge in hospital patients that have contracted COVID-19.
“We will have a crushing wave of hospital patients coming next week,” said Chad Towner, the CEO of St. Joseph Health System in Marshall County.
He said they are dealing with a plethora of issues because of the this new surge in cases. Towner said they are having staffing issues, which many other hospitals in Indiana are seeing, and that the “well is dry” in terms of finding more people to make sure they are covered.
Towner said they see about 1,000 COVID cases a day throughout the entire St. Joseph Health System, which covers several counties in northern Indiana, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Illinois, and Michigan.
“The beds that we have created for our COVID unit, we have had to take away from our non-COVID beds,” he added. “This limits a hospitals ability to care for heart attacks, strokes, and other medical conditions that require hospitalization.”
Towner, along with the Marshall County Health Department, is echoing the requests from state health experts that you not travel this year for Thanksgiving. Towner believes if many Hoosiers do travel for Thanksgiving, we will see another spike in COVID cases and deaths hit by January.
