January 7, 2022 – The Joint Crisis Communication Team held a press conference today at the Civic Center to discuss the current surge in COVID-19 cases. Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe, DMH CEO Drew Early, HSHS CEO Theresa Rutherford, Macon County Health Department Public Health Administrator Brandi Binkley, and Crossing Healthcare CMO Dr. Dana Ray all gathered to discuss the current state of the pandemic.
“We have seen a dramatic spike in COVID in Macon County. In the last few weeks, the numbers have been going up. In the last week, they have dramatically spiked. Our hospitals are jammed, our healthcare workers are stressed,” said Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe.
“When we’re looking at numbers across the state as of yesterday, when I looked at those, we have 260 ICU beds across the entire state, not just to take care of you and your families and friends if you have COVID but anything else. If you get into a car accident, have a heart attack, it is imperative that we have space and staff that can take care of you in our community and across the state. So we do encourage everyone to do everything they can back to those very basic public health precautionary measures of washing your hands, staying home if you’re sick, allowing your employees to stay home if they are sick so that they aren’t spreading things, and making sure that you are doing everything you can as a person in our community and anywhere you go to protect your life and protect the lives of others,” added Brandi Binkley.
“Right now, we’re seeing about 76% of hospitalized COVID patients are unvaccinated. We were talking about going back and thinking about the basics, if you have not, get your vaccine. If you have been vaccinated, get your booster. We’ve got to continue to address the numbers. 80% of our patients in our intensive care units that are COVID positive are unvaccinated,” said Theresa Rutherford. She also went on to stress that they have to make decisions based on the number of beds available, and that could include elective cases that will not harm the patients to wait. Those may need to be canceled due to a lack of beds and hands to take care of patients.
Drew Early echoed those statements. “We are seeing numbers across Memorial Health System that are exceeding previous high levels set during the pandemic. Right now, this is the high-water mark for us and I don’t think any of us thought we would be here 22 months after we started this but we are. The unfortunate reality is that it has impacted healthcare locally to a very, very large degree,” He said.
All speakers stressed that now is the time to make a collective movement to try and prevent this spike from becoming worse.
