CentraCare: St. Cloud Hospital Has 18 Patients on Ventilators

(KNSI) – St. Cloud Hospital has been treating 55 to 65 COVID patients a day for the past three weeks, according to officials.

As of Tuesday, CentraCare Health reported 56 COVID-19 patients. Four of the patients are breakthrough cases in people over age 65. Officials say 19 people are in the Intensive Care Unit with 18 patients on ventilators. None of the breakthrough cases are in the ICU. Fifteen of the hospitalized are under age 50.

COVID 19 Physician Incident Commander Dr. George Morris says they’ve had as many as 70 people in the hospital at one time.

“We all like to track the numbers, but each of those is a person. And each of them has a story, and many of them have said both to our staff and or their family, boy, I wish I would have been vaccinated. Boy, I wish my story could be shared to help get more people in the community vaccinated.”

He says many of those patients didn’t have to get sick.

“We’ll refer to them as the vaccine-preventable hospitalizations. There are many cases that we could avoid having people get this sick with the vaccine.”

Health officials say 90% of the infected are unvaccinated. Dr. Morris says the pandemic has been kept alive by the unvaccinated and the delta variant.

“This is a Delta surge. Ninty nine to 100% of the cases are related to delta right now.”

COVID-19 killed has killed more than 675,000 people in the U.S., more than the 1918 Spanish flu.

“This now is the most deadly pandemic for the United States. And in Minnesota, almost 8,000 people have died from COVID. That is the population of Waite Park. So, over the past year and a half, our state has lost the population of an entire city.”

The surge has caused CentraCare Health to reinstate its visitor restrictions policy. Patients can only have one visitor and it must be the same visitor each time. Dr. Morris says Stearns County has a test positivity rate of 10%, which is considered widespread. He says there has also been an uptick in children getting sick with COVID, with some getting hospitalized. As of last week, more than 400 schools statewide had reported COVID cases.

But he says there’s some good news on the way. CentraCare has administered 1000 3rd doses to immunocompromised patients in the last month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend a booster shot for those age 65 and older, and Dr. Morris says CentraCare could start giving booster shots next week. Vaccine makers have submitted data to federal officials for a vaccine for children between 5 and 12. Dr. Morris says that the vaccine could be available by Halloween or Christmas.

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