Local Doctor Says Latest COVID-19 Surge Didn’t Have to Happen

(KNSI) — St. Cloud area medical experts say the current COVID surge didn’t have to happen and is hitting rural Minnesota harder than the Twin Cities.

COVID-19 Incident Commander for CentraCare Health Dr. George Morris says this wave didn’t have to happen if people had gotten vaccinated when they first had the chance.

“My opinion is we missed our opportunity in the spring. Our vaccination rates were climbing. We were heading to that 70 to 90% herd immunity. So in April and May, when our vaccine centers were very busy, we would have been very happy to maintain that level of business for our vaccine clinics, so that we could have prevented this surge. And we could have, these are preventable cases.”

Morris said when cases during the spring surge started to taper off, so did the people getting vaccinated. He says people should have been getting vaccinated to prevent the next wave. Morris says the science shows the vaccine has saved more than 39,000 older adults. He says this latest surge is hitting outstate Minnesota harder than the seven-county metro.

“There are actually more people hospitalized in Greater Minnesota than in the seven county metro area. So this is another case where the current surge is really hitting Greater Minnesota. The activity is here.”

Morris says some of that is from not following social distancing guidelines; some are from low vaccination rates. He says the current surge could start to overwhelm the local healthcare system.

“This is where the cases and the need for our medical treatment, because this surge is so high, it’s becoming untenable. And we can’t keep doing it this way.”

He says hospitalizations have been climbing steadily since August, and the hospital may need to start delaying procedures. He says the case count is beginning to take its toll on the nurses and staff. Eventually, Dr. Morris says this surge will begin to burn itself out, but he adds it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

“In the next two weeks, the cases are going to go up. And if I look back at our pattern, as the cases go up, eventually we hit a plateau, the plateau may last for you know, two to four weeks, and then it comes down. And that come down, can range anywhere from you know, four weeks to 12. And that’s the harsh part is, we’re not going to be out of this until you know closer to the holidays.”

Data shows a 13% percent positivity rate for people tested for COVID-19 in the region. That’s roughly one out of every eight people tested.

St. Cloud-based CentraCare Health reports 83 patients were in the hospital system as of Wednesday afternoon, with 64 of those at St. Cloud
Hospital. CentraCare says 22 of them are in the ICU at St. Cloud Hospital, with 14 on ventilators. 80% of the COVID cases CentraCare is treating are in unvaccinated people, with 20% breakthrough cases, or 16 patients. According to CentraCare officials, of those breakthrough cases, one person is on a ventilator, and three are people under age 50.

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