News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Cookeville Regional Chief Strategy Officer Ricky Shelton said the administration is concerned about the rising number of housed COVID patients.
Shelton said the number of hospitalizations are the highest since January of this year.
“We were very busy and near capacity before this rise,” Shelton said. “Now as you can imagine, we are very full. Today, we have 56 positive COVIDs.”
Shelton said with cases increasing, elective surgeries requiring an overnight stay will be temporarily suspended starting Monday. Shelton said the decision will be re-evaluated weekly until the wave passes.
“What we are seeing is the importance of people getting vaccinated, and I know there are more people getting vaccinated,” Shelton said. “But, that’s really the only thing that we are seeing to help slow this at all.”
Shelton said of the 56 patients, 15 are placed in ICU, six are on ventilators with zero reported deaths during this rise. Shelton said eight new admits came in overnight Wednesday with only one vaccinated.
“Overall over the past week as a kind of track this, I think we’ve only had three people that are in the hospital that are vaccinated and non of those are in the ICU,” Shelton said. “As we’ve seen from medical experts, the vaccination helps make the case of COVID a little less severe.”
Shelton said besides one 18-year-old, the hospital has not seen any adolescents admitted recently. One thing that has increased though are the number of people taking infusions, Shelton said.
“That has grown rapidly,” Shelton said. “There was 48 people that received infusions yesterday of the monoclonal antibody. For people that have COVID and take this and it really helps on that.”
Shelton said he encourages people to speak with their medical provider when deciding on being vaccinated. Shelton said he does not see COVID going away, and people need to be careful.
