In early April, Michigan hospitals saw approximately 5,280 COVID-19 patients per day. Among those, 1,424 patients were on ventilators.
Hospitals in Southeast Michigan were at “super capacity," while other regions were bracing for a similar impact felt in Metro Detroit. Fortunately, most health care regions of the state weathered the initial storm.
Fast forward two months, Michigan is down to less than 620 hospitalized coronavirus-positive patients and a few hundred more with symptoms of respiratory illness who haven’t been confirmed COVID-19 cases yet but are being isolated and treated the same, according to Dr. William Fales, state medical director for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of EMS and Trauma.
But the threat of the virus hasn’t gone away.
“We’ve had huge reductions, but there are still several hundred patients on ventilators every day in Michigan and we’re admitting well over 1,000 patients each day,” Fales said. “That’s still a really bad scenario. If this was a flu season, it would be a really, really bad one.
"The virus is still here and it’s still taking its toll, just so much less than those extreme numbers we saw earlier.”
Data reported daily by MDHHS shows a significant decrease in COVID-19 patients being hospitalized. Total daily occupancy is 60-70 percent, compared to the 90-105 percent it would be in a non-pandemic year.
But hospitals reporting “well below capacity” is what health officials want to see at this point in the pandemic, according to Fales, who has been a practicing emergency and EMS physician since 1993.
“Hospitals right now have abundant capacity to care for patients,” he said. “The concern though is that it doesn’t take much, especially in rural areas of the state, to rapidly return to where we saturate and super saturate our hospitals with COVID patients.”
“As we start to reengage our society, we’re still at risk of an all sudden increase.”
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Dr. William Fales, state medical director of the Division of EMS and Trauma for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. (Courtesy photo | WMed Communications)
Michigan has reported 58,035 confirmed cases of the respiratory virus in about 12 weeks since the first presumptive positive cases were announced March 10. At least 5,570 Michigan deaths have been linked to the virus.
The state’s reported coronavirus cases have largely been on the decline since peaking in early April. In exactly two months, the state has gone from averaging 1,626 cases per day, down to 347 per day.
Health officials credit the cooperation of the majority of residents who have stayed home, social distanced, worn masks and practiced consistent hand washing for the declines.
During the peak, the state’s two Metro Detroit health care regions --2N and 2S -- were “maximally stressed” while the rest of the regions were “minimally stressed,” according to Fales.
Region 2S had 1,101 hospitalized patients per 1 million people on April 7. At that time, Region 2N had 971 patients per 1 million people.
“What we found was during the 21-day period for our peak compared to New York City’s, we had eight days where we had as many or more patients per 1 million hospitalized in the city of Detroit than they had in New York City," Fales said.
Outside of Metro Detroit, only Region 3 -- which includes the Flint and Saginaw areas -- exceeded 200 patients per 1 million people.
“We do have hospitals across the state that never experienced that surge," Fales said. "They preemptively took steps to make beds available in anticipation of the wave coming to them. In many cases that never occurred, which is a very good thing.”
Five health systems reported having at least 100 COVID-19 patients as of Monday, June 1. They are Ascension (122), Beaumont (178), Henry Ford (109), McLaren (117) and Trinity (121). Each of the five are between 61 and 71 percent bed occupancy.
Michigan is using about 31 percent of its approximately 3,300 ventilators as of this week. That’s down from about 50 percent in use in early April.
As of Wednesday, 224 patients remained on ventilators -- more than 1,100 fewer than during the state’s peak.
Fales said some hospitals have returned the extra ventilators they received to the state or regional stockpiles. Borrowed ventilators from New York and California were returned either to the strategic national stockpile or made available to other states in need.
While Michigan is in a better place in early June than its been in weeks past, Fales said the state could return to overwhelming levels of infections “in the blink of an eye” if residents don’t continue to take precautions laid out by health officials.
He also acknowledged that as the state begins to reopen during the summer months, hospitals will inevitably see more motor vehicle crashes and other patients presenting serious medical conditions.
“We also worry that one other casualty of the pandemic has been patients that would have come in with chest pain to be evaluated, perhaps out of fear for the virus, they’ve stayed home and then perhaps had a cardiac arrest and died at home," Fales said. “It’s so important to remind people, if you have any kind of concerning symptoms, this is the time to seek medical attention.”
PREVENTION TIPS
In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus.
Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible.
Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.
Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.
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