Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb
INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb and state health officials Wednesday painted a grim picture of the current state of the pandemic, warning that they expect a “very steep rise” in COVID-19 cases in coming weeks as the omicron variant converges with an ongoing delta surge.
The number of Hoosiers hospitalized with COVID-19 has reached its highest level in a year, and the overall hospital census in Indiana is at its highest level in five years, officials said. Just 9.2% of the state’s ICU beds were available Wednesday, the fewest available so far during the pandemic, according to the Indiana Department of Health.
Patients are being held in the emergency room for hours and sometimes days until a bed becomes available, officials said. Others are being cared for in hallways and conference rooms.
Hospitals are also reporting critical staffing shortages and staff are exhausted, officials said. The Indiana National Guard has been deployed to about two dozen hospitals across the state to help ease staffing issues.
On top of that, Indiana is experiencing a shortage of rapid tests that has led to a 78% decrease in the weekly supply that state testing facilities have as people line up at some testing sites an hour before they open, officials said.
And “this situation will get worse before it improves,” said Indiana State Health Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box during a news briefing Wednesday.
“We once again are facing a very bleak situation with this pandemic,” Box said.
Holcomb announced he had signed an extension of the state’s public health emergency.
Box and Holcomb implored Hoosiers to get vaccinated, if not for themselves, then for children under age 5 who cannot be vaccinated yet and to also protect all the loved ones in their families.
The dire warning from state health officials comes as new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. have soared to their highest level on record at over 265,000 per day on average, a surge driven largely by the highly contagious omicron variant, The Associated Press reported.
New cases per day have more than doubled over the past two weeks, eclipsing the old mark of 250,000, set in mid-January, according to data kept by Johns Hopkins University.
The Indiana Department of Health reported 7,967 new COVID-19 cases across the state Wednesday, including 95 in Bartholomew County, 74 in Jackson County and 31 in Jennings County.
Currently, the delta variant remains the predominant strain in Indiana, but health officials said they expect that to change quickly as the omicron variants gains a foothold in the state.
The fast-spreading mutant version of the virus has cast a pall over Christmas and New Year’s, forcing communities to scale back or call off their festivities just weeks after it seemed as if Americans were about to enjoy an almost normal holiday season, according to wire reports. Thousands of flights have been canceled amid staffing shortages blamed on the virus.
The picture also is grim elsewhere around the world, especially in Europe, with World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus saying he is worried about omicron combining with the delta variant to produce a “tsunami” of cases, according to wire reports. That, he said, will put “immense pressure on exhausted health workers and health systems on the brink of collapse.”
Several European countries, including France, Greece, Britain and Spain, also reported record case counts this week, prompting a ban on music at New Year’s celebrations in Greece and a renewed push to encourage vaccination by French authorities, according to the AP.
WHO reported that new COVID-19 cases worldwide increased 11% last week from the week before, with nearly 4.99 million recorded Dec. 20-26, according to wire reports. But the U.N. health agency also noted a decline in cases in South Africa, where omicron was first detected just over a month ago.
The number of Americans now in the hospital with COVID-19 is running at around 60,000, or about half the figure seen in January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
While hospitalizations sometimes lag behind cases, the hospital figures may reflect both the protection conferred by the vaccine and the possibility that omicron is not making people as sick as previous versions.
COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have climbed over the past two weeks from an average of 1,200 per day to around 1,500. Bartholomew County recently recorded its 200th death from the virus.
On Sunday, there were 52 people hospitalized with COVID-19 at Columbus Regional Hospital, according to the most recent figures from the local COVID-19 Community Task Force.
Earlier this month, CRH reported that its overall patient census reached its highest level in the hospital’s 104-year history. The census later declined somewhat, though officials said the situation remained “very severe.”
Local health officials have said “all hospitals in Indiana really are struggling and are concerned with where we are currently and where we could go” as the surge continues.
Box, for her part, said, “It does seem a little like there’s some deja vu here with what we experienced at the very beginning of the pandemic.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
