Johnson Memorial Health’s emergency department waiting area is nearly empty on Dec. 29, as the hospital was overfull and on diversion.
DAILY JOURNAL FILE PHOTO
For the first time since last summer, Johnson Memorial Hospital has no COVID-19 patients.
COVID-19 admissions have been few and far between for the past month. The patient who went home Wednesday was the only one being treated for COVID-19 at the hospital for more than a week, said Dr. David Dunkle, hospital president and CEO.
The discharge was less than a week after the two-year anniversary of the announcement that the first three county residents had COVID-19 on March 10, 2020.
It is too early to declare victory, Dunkle said.
“We are in a lull, but we are keeping an eye on everything in China and Europe,” he said. “I don’t think we can say that we are totally out of the woods yet. We just hope and pray that there’s not another surge.”
Instead of the hundreds of cases reported daily to the Indiana Department of Health a few months ago, newly reported cases in Johnson County are in the single digits.
However, actual case numbers are likely higher than what is shown on the state’s dashboard because at-home testing has become more widely available.
The county’s positivity rate has continued to drop since the peak of the omicron variant in mid-January. The 7-day positivity rate was less than 1% on Wednesday, according to state data.
No Johnson County resident has died of COVID-19 complications since Feb. 27, state data shows.
Today’s number resemble those reported in March 2020, but for different reasons.
Cases in the early days of the pandemic were low because testing was not widely available and restrictions forced many to stay at home. Public health officials now say COVID-19 was spreading earlier and much more often than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was capable of testing at the time.
Today, there are plenty of tests, but the need is not as great due to the availability of vaccines and natural immunity.
The consistently low case numbers and no hospitalizations are welcomed by hospital staff, who have had no break in treating COVID-19 patients for months, Dunkle said.
Despite the lull, the hospital is keeping in place all of its COVID-19 surveillance measures, including screening visitors and testing all admitted patients. It is important to stay vigilant and prepared for the possibility of another surge, he said.
Virus mutations caused several surges over the last two years. It is plausible a new surge could develop even with the number of people who caught omicron or received a booster shot.
Flexibility and positivity are two words to remember during this next stage of the pandemic. It is OK to be positive and hope that community spread stays low, but the public should be flexible enough to adjust behavior if a new surge threatens to fill up hospitals again, Dunkle said.
