Representatives from Mercy Health St. Rita’s, Lima Memorial Health System, and three local health departments met over Zoom to discuss the ongoing pandemic, especially as the Omicron variant continues to rip through the state of Ohio.
St. Rita’s is currently housing 65 COVID patients, and Lima Memorial has 30. Those with the hospitals say that that’s a slight decrease in numbers, but they're nowhere near out of the woods just yet.
"Those numbers may be slightly down from what we’ve had the past few weeks, but I think it’s safe to say that we’re both at capacity or excess," said Dr. Dennis Morris, Chief Medical Officer for Lima Memorial Health System. "We’re still boarding patients in the emergency department, trying to place them in hospital rooms, so the numbers are still very high."
The health commissioners of Allen, Auglaize, and Putnam Counties echoed seeing a downtick in numbers from the Thanksgiving holiday, but they believe some of that downward trend may be from people testing at home and not necessarily reporting positive cases to their local health department.
One local doctor gave his insight of the number of cases and patients that they’ve been seeing through this pandemic, and yet another urged the public to try and set up a telehealth session if they feel they may need to be tested to avoid long wait times at the ER.
"We’re seeing patients who are delaying getting tested because they’re not having those classic symptoms and therefore they feel that it’s not due to COVID," said Dr. Mark Kahle with St. Rita's. "If you’re able to get tested early, you reduce the spread of COVID and also have more effective treatment options."
"I hate having people go to the emergency room and wait for hours to be seen, and then have contact with other sick people and catch things that they didn’t have when they went there," said Dr. Susan Kaufman with Lima Memorial. "Avoiding the emergency room unless you’re very very sick is just the best bet."
But one of the biggest messages coming from this meeting was that people should consider getting the vaccine, as many of the people who are hospitalized with COVID have not been vaccinated.
"We do believe the vaccine still helps, and in particular, not only do we believe, but we really know that the vaccine provides strong protective effects for severe disease, particularly a disease that would land someone in the hospital or a critical care center," said Dr. Matthew Owens with St. Rita's.
