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Michigan hospitals filling with COVID-19 cases at an alarming rate

Posted at 10:37 AM, Nov 12, 2020
and last updated 2020-11-12 10:41:22-05

Michigan health care leaders spoke on the rise in COVID-19 cases across Michigan that could lead to a public health crisis.

Beaumont, Spectrum Health, Henry Ford and Munson Healthcare leaders are asking everyone to help frontline workers by following the health department guidelines for Coronavirus as inpatient volume has now tripled over the last 4 weeks.

Capacity issues are happening at hospitals around the state now as they're seeing a significant escalation in community spread of COVID-19.

Beaumont says inpatient volume has now tripled with COVID-19 in the past 30 days and they now have more than 400 cases of COVID-19 in their eight hospitals and it's continuing to accelerate.

At Henry Ford in the last 14 days COVID-19 admissions have risen by 128% and the positivity rate is 16.4% as of Thursday morning.

Tina Freese Decker, the President & Chief Executive Officer of Spectrum Health says they are giving out about 4,000 tests a day and they're seeing a 15% positivity rate, compared to 3% in September.

In the Upper Peninsula 61% of patients in ICU beds are there with COVID-19.

Currently 3,000 inpatients in Michigan Hospitals are COVID-19 patients and of those 255 are on ventilators.

Leaders are hoping to not shutdown clinical services so those don't delay care for those who need it.

Plans are in place to have staff reallocate if needed, to take care of critically ill patients.