Hospitalizations at Johnson Memorial Hospital nearly doubled in the last week, and the local health department’s COVID-19 test site recorded record numbers of new tests.
Johnson County this week remained in the orange, according to the state’s color-coded metric system, but local health officials say the situation is worsening as COVID-19 becomes more widespread, and the disease becomes more severe.
Johnson County on Wednesday reported 142 new COVID-19 cases, adding to its nearly 1,000 cases in the last week, with a 12.8% average positive test rate over seven days.
Statewide, case numbers show an even bleaker picture. The state on Wednesday reported 6,143 new cases, with a 12.2% average positive test rate over seven days. Sixty more Hoosiers died in the last week.
State officials on Wednesday said the numbers are troubling, though no new restrictions were added. Instead, Dr. Kristina Box, state health commissioner, asked Hoosiers to stay home for the holidays and consider online shopping rather than participating in Black Friday shopping.
And as the state’s college students prepare to go home for the holidays, Box asked college students to consider quarantining at home for 14 days.
Johnson Memorial Hospital is seeing its highest number of COVID-19 hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic, and cases are more severe than hospital staff have seen in months, said Dr. David Dunkle, the hospital’s president and CEO.
On Wednesday, 15 COVID-19 patients were being treated at the Franklin hospital, double the hospital’s peak during the spring, he said.
Hospitalizations are nearly double where they were just six days ago. Eight patients were being treated Friday; that number jumped to 15 Wednesday, Dunkle said.
The number of hospitalizations is already higher than Dunkle ever expected to see, but hospital staff are gearing up for an even greater influx as positivity rates continue to climb, he said.
This week, four more rooms on the hospital’s first-floor medical wing were converted to COVID-19 treatment rooms, and a construction crew is converting four more rooms on the second floor, which would bring the total to 18, Dunkle said. Those extra isolated rooms are expected to be ready for patients by the weekend, he said.
If all 18 rooms fill up, the hospital will turn to regular hospital rooms next, and surgery recovery rooms as a last resort, Dunkle said. His hope, though, is that community spread will slow.
Initially, Johnson Memorial was treating COVID-19 patients in the hospital’s new emergency wing, where up to 26 could have been treated. However, since there were never more than seven hospitalizations — until now — Dunkle thought it made sense to open the new emergency room and move COVID-19 patients to the medical wing, he said.
“We never thought we would need more than 10. We thought it would be more than enough. Unfortunately, that is not turning out to be the case,” Dunkle said.
Read more of this story in Thursday’s Daily Journal.
