Hospitals Plead With Hoosiers to Mask Up As COVID Strains System
(INDIANAPOLIS) – Indianapolis hospitals are warning their patient load is approaching crisis levels, and pleading with Hoosiers to take coronavirus precautions seriously.
COVID hospitalizations statewide are down 11% this month, but Indy hospitals say their numbers haven’t gone down. Even across the state, there are twice as many patients as there were in the pandemic’s first wave in the spring, and five times as many as there were at the low point four months ago.
Hospitals say it’s not just the increased number of patients that’s creating strain on the system. Eskenazi Health chief nursing officer Lee Ann Blue says the patients in the current wave are sicker. And IU Health vice president Michelle Saysana says illnesses are more widespread than the first wave. Back then, she says, IU’s patients were concentrated at its hospitals in downtown Indianapolis and in Avon. Now, all 18 hospitals in the IU system are flooded with patients.