Future Coronavirus Surge Could Overwhelm Local Hospitals

Received their vaccines.

Almost 120 people are hospitalized in the shoals two biggest hospitals, helen keller and the north alabama medical center.

Waay31's breken terry is live at helen keller -- where they currently have 52 people in the hospital with coronavirus, breken?

Helen keller hospital president kyle buchanan said the scary thing about this increase is that it isn't the christmas or new years increase they're planning for.

All hospitals are feeling the strain of this virus more then ever.

Buchanan- we've averaged over 50 the last week this is the first week that we've averaged at that level of 50+ and there are several times this week we've been as high as 58 which is a record for us.

Helen keller hospital isn't the only one feeling the strain.

As of wednesday, the north alabama medical center said it had over 65 coronavirus patients.

Buchanan said it's scary to reach these records before the other holiday spikes.

Buchanan- in our coroner of the state in lauderdale, colbert, and franklin counties we have record numbers of community positive so were seeing 1,000 and last week over 1,000 new covid positive patients receiving their test results.

With more people testing positive buchanan said that means more people are being hospitalized with the virus.

Right now, helen keller is limiting elective surgeries based on how many beds they have avalible.

He said if this keeps ups we could see what's happened in other states throughout the pandemic.

Buchanan- outside of our state we've had several lessons learned from other states that got overwhelmed.

You will have entire counties or metro areas in which they can no longer accept patients and patients are being shipped across stateliness because in that local community there is no healthcare for covid or non covid patients.

Buchanan said the community must do everything it can to make sure this isn't our future.

Buchanan- we've seen within our state several transfer requests from 4 or 5 hours from the shoals area to say hey were in south alabama we no longer have any beds can helen keller hospital take this normal pneumonia that we would otherwise be comfortable taking but we just don't have the space.

We don't want that here.

Really the ball is in our court as a community to make sure that doesn't happen anywhere in north alabama but especially the shoals.

We can choose to do it or we can walk directly into the path in which we put ourselves in that type of risk.

Buchanan said science doesn't lie and they're confident the uptick in community spread is coming from more and more people gathering for the holidays and spending more time indoors because it's cold and people are letting their guard down.

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