One-fourth of all CentraCare patients have COVID-19, ICU and critical care beds full

ST. CLOUD — CentraCare Health's intensive care unit and critical care beds are still above maximum capacity, and 25% of all CentraCare patients have tested positive for COVID-19 regardless if they came in for COVID-related symptoms or not, said Dr. George Morris Tuesday, CentraCare's incident commander for COVID-19 response.

The update comes a week after city officials around the St. Cloud area declined CentraCare's request to implement a temporary mask mandate to slow the spread of COVID-19 and preserve hospital staffing levels.

As of noon Tuesday, there were 107 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 at CentraCare. 75% were unvaccinated and less than 5% were vaccinated with their booster shot, Morris said.

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"We're at least 125%, if not 130%, of our usual max [capacity]," Morris said. "That's what we're doing for our critical care patients. A large portion of them — 70-80% — are still non-vaccinated."

Morris said a very low number of people who have gotten their booster dose are currently hospitalized — around 2-5%.

"We still do have some people that are immunosuppressed … so they are very vulnerable and they don't mount a great immune response," he said. "Which is why for everybody in the community we really need to minimize the spread to help protect them."

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One-fourth of patients test positive for COVID-19

Morris said one in four patients admitted to CentraCare recently have tested positive for COVID-19, despite some patients coming to the hospital for unrelated issues.

CentraCare saw some of these types of COVID-19 cases sporadically before, but Morris said the omicron variant has made this infection rate a growing reality, both locally and nationally.

It puts an additional burden on staff, who are already exhausted, he said. COVID-positive patients have to be put in special rooms with negative airflow and staff need to wear additional protective equipment and monitor them more closely.

As CentraCare reported last week, over 800 staff are still out sick with COVID, Morris said.

"We live here, we work here," he said. "It's going to run through our staff."

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Morris said working through the pandemic has been like running a long series of marathons.

"It is very fatiguing to care for COVID patients," he said. "[Staff are] still very busy pulling extra shifts, doing overtime. You know, you could have an administrator working down in the kitchen, food services. We had one of our executives helping move the garbage carts around because we still have that to do and we are still short handed."

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In light of the rejection of any St. Cloud-area city or county mask mandates, Morris said it's difficult to recognize the community is not on the same page about the pandemic.

"There's probably a little sense of frustration of are we all operating from the same book? Not even on the same page, but from the same book?" Morris said. "We want everybody to be on the same book, and the book is 'COVID is devastating. How do we manage it? And how do we move forward?'"

Becca Most is a cities reporter with the St. Cloud Times. Reach her at 320-241-8213 or bmost@stcloudtimes.com. Follow her on Twitter at @becca_most.

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This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: 25% of CentraCare patients have COVID-19, ICU and critical care beds full