Health officials in Berrien County are concerned about the recent COVID-19 trends as hospitalizations are up. Speaking on a Zoom update Thursday, Spectrum Health Lakeland President Loren Hamel said more COVID cases mean more people needing hospital care. October has seen the trend go up.
“Our peak back in April was in the 20s,” Hamel said. “We’re now in the 30s. We’ve had as many as 36 in the hospital at once. Our ICU is getting significantly more full. We’ve had up to 6 or 7 in the ICU.”
Hamel said the health system has “significant concerns” about running out of beds in the next several weeks if the current trend continues. He said if it does, it will create “serious capacity constraints in the health system.”
“We certainly invite you and ask you to be incredibly careful. There’s a lot of misinformation. When you look around the web, when you listen to your friends and neighbors, there’s a lot of misinformation. COVID is still in our community.”
On a positive note, Hamel said the death rate is going down as better treatments are available and methods of quarantine improve.
