TOLEDO, Ohio — About one in three patients in northwest Ohio emergency rooms have COVID-19, according to the Ohio Hospital Association.
"Right now, we have some of the highest numbers of admits and ICU bed use than we've had even when we had the spike a month or two ago," Toledo-Lucas County Health Commissioner Eric Zgodzinski said.
Dr. Brian Kaminski with ProMedica is calling this a "serious situation."
About one in every six patients in the hospital have COVID-19, he said, and a majority of the people walking through emergency room doors are also COVID-19 patients.
"Many of them are released and recover at home," Kaminski said. "Some of them are receiving other treatments like monoclonal antibodies, but those take time and resources."
The president of Wood County Hospital, Dr. Stan Korducki, said their beds are quickly filling up too.
Sometimes, a hospital will have to be put on bypass — meaning the emergency room is full.
"What will happen is, temporarily, we will only be on bypass for two hours, four hours or a day," Korducki said. "But eventually, patients go home and you kind of get that release."
But, why are these emergency rooms filling up so quickly?
Kaminski said it's a combination of a hospital staffing shortage and patients with only minor symptoms of COVID-19 taking up space in the ER. So instead, he recommends going someplace else if it's not urgent.
"Your primary care physician's office, urgent care, retail care are all good items when seeking care for those more mild conditions, including COVID," Kaminski.
Another solution hospitals have used in the past to free up beds is to cancel non-elective surgeries. However, Korducki emphasized we're not at that point just yet.
"It really isn't the answer and it certainly doesn't help patients that have things that really need to get done fairly soon," he said.
Medical experts say between the holidays and flu season, added stresses are expected to be piled onto the hospital system.