As cases have soared in recent weeks, there are now 3,072 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Michigan and hospital executives are sounding the alarm.
Michigan has 229,285 COVID-19 cases and 7,766 have died from the virus — an additional 6,008 cases and 46 deaths since Tuesday. This is part of a nationwide trend, as the United States hit a record 144,000 new cases Wednesday, pushing the total well above 10 million cases.
Michigan Health and Hospital Association CEO Brian Peters described Michigan as being in the midst of a “public health crisis.”
“If this continues in the coming weeks, we will surpass our all-time record high in terms of COVID in-patient hospitalization numbers here in the state of Michigan,” he said on a conference call Thursday.
Last month, chief medical officers and chief clinical officers at 110 of Michigan’s 137 hospitals said they won’t be lifting COVID-19 safety protocols at their facilities anytime soon and encouraged mask-wearing and social distancing to stop the spread.
“If Michigan doesn’t change its approach to this disease, we could have crowded hospital emergency departments and approach exceeding the capacity of our hospitals as we did in Southeast Michigan this past spring,” they said in the joint statement.
Hospitals across the state are now seeing a surge. Spectrum Health, which owns hospitals in West Michigan, expects to hit capacity within a few days and is restricting other surgeries.
A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report last month showed that Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital in downtown Grand Rapids had the highest estimated three-day average of inpatient bed utilization in the country.
