CRMC Cases Double Since Dec. 1, Seeing Less Severe Cases

Cookeville Regional COVID cases have doubled since the beginning of the month.

CRMC Chief Strategy Officer Ricky Shelton said that as of Thursday, there are some 32 positive isolations in the facility. However, Shelton said that despite the increased numbers, the cases are less severe.

“Of those 32, six of those are in ICU,” Shelton said. “Where before when we had the spike and the highest in August and September, when we were 75, 80, 90 in the house, you were looking at 25 to 30 percent in the ICU. And we’re not seeing that as of right now.”

Shelton said that the decrease in severity can be attributed to a combination of things from vaccinations to a less severe variant. He said that as of right now, there is not a definitive way to determine what variant the cases are.

Shelton said that after the surge in August and September, the hospital projected a baseline of about 20 positive cases to be the average. He said that they are anticipating a post-holiday surge, and will begin to report figures again should the numbers increase drastically.

“It’s even been going up and down here over the past week here at the facility,” Shelton said. “I mean in the past week we’ve had 22 up to 37. So it’s still going up and down. A lot of the monoclonal antibodies are being given. We’re back up to levels, that yesterday 70 monoclonal antibodies were infused here at the medical center. Our understanding is that many facilities in other, bigger areas that are out of that.”

Shelton said that there is a concern that the center could run out of monoclonal antibodies. He said that for whatever reason, the federal government has not shipped the state any monoclonal antibodies over the past ten days. He said that the hospital is still trying to determine the issue with shipments.