More than 13 thousand Mississippians have tested positive for the Coronavirus in the past nine days. While a record number of people have been hospitalized with the virus, hospitalizations have remained steady. State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs says it can take a week or two before someone with the virus would need to be hospitalized. "And because we have seen such a high caseload over the past couple of weeks, we can expect to see more hospitalizations and deaths going forward for at least a month," says Dr. Dobbs. "Anything we do now that's gonna have any positive impact on that is not gonna be seen for weeks, unfortunately."
Dr. Jonathan Wilson is incident manager at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. He says UMMC has effectively been split into two hospitals; one that cares for COVID-19 patients, and another for all other medical needs. He says the main problem is meeting the needs of non-COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit. He says "that's driven because of COVID-19 occupying some of the resources we would normally have available in our intensive care units. But since those resources aren't available, we really have a limited amount of capacity for non-COVID-19 related emergencies."
When Coronavirus hospitalizations increase beyond what the hospital can handle, Dr. Wilson says it will be difficult to maintain the standard of care Mississippians expect. He says this won't just impact COVID-19 patients, but everyone seeking medical care. He says "We just won't have enough staff and places to take care of patients for all the demand we would have, and that's not something that we are accustomed to having to face, but that is a reality that we are having to come to grips with on how we can try to do the best we can."
Earlier this week, nine hospitals in Mississippi were operating with zero capacity in their ICUs.
