Workers weary, patients angry as COVID-19 fills Michigan hospitals sooeveningnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sooeveningnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
by Alan Stamm State hospital occupancy data reinforces news that Michigan is hard-hit as the pandemic persists into a second year.
(Nonlocal file photo: DepositPhotos) As of Friday, 82.7% of adult intensive care beds were occupied statewide by 2,566 patients including 735 with confirmed or suspected Covid-19, according to the Department of Health and Human Services daily capacity report. Three hundred and fifty-five of the 735 were on ventilators. Even though just under 29% of ICU patients had Covid or were presumed positive, the data shows some hospitals can t handle many more severely ill patients. Overall, 80% of Michigan s 21,473 adult in-patient beds were filled, based on reports from all but 7 percent of hospitals. That includes 3,780 confirmed and suspected Covid cases (18%).
Credit Ryan Garza / Bridge Michigan
With an eye on his father’s bloodied face, Barry Jensen began punching numbers into his cell phone from the hospital emergency room.
His 90-year-old dad had fallen on a gravel driveway. His glasses were broken. His family worried that his bones might be, too.
Seats inside the Beaumont Hospital emergency room in the downriver Detroit community of Trenton were filled that day in late March. Several people lay on gurneys.
The son remembers thinking “it looked like a scene from a disaster movie, just on a smaller scale.”
A doctor might be free to see his father in another three, four, maybe even five hours, Jensen was told.