Mercy Springfield, CoxHealth both treated over 100 COVID-19 patients over the weekend; Mercy Adds Another COVID Unit

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SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) – More than 100 patients are hospitalized with COVID-19 at Mercy Springfield and CoxHealth facilities in the Ozarks region through Sunday, July 11.

Erik Frederick, Administrative Director of Mercy Springfield and Steve Edwards, CEO and Chairman of CoxHealth, shared updates on COVID-19-related hospitalizations on Twitter on Sunday.

133 COVID + @MercySGF. Opening of a 6th COVID unit. Only need 5 last year. Many local rural communities do not have high vaccination rates. They don’t have a hospital either. Get sick, come to Springfield. I think this is left out in the narrative. https://t.co/eu5DSyomX0

– Erik Frédéric (@CAOMercySGF) July 11, 2021

119 Covid patients hospitalized at CoxHealth this morning. (We only had 14 patients in mid-May).

Projections for the week of July 19 range from 153 to 178. That’s probably way beyond our capabilities.

Delta is so highly transmissible, if not vaccinated you are at enormous risk.

– Steve Edwards (@SDECoxHealth) July 11, 2021

Mercy Springfield and CoxHealth are treating a total of 252 COVID-19 patients on Sunday. That total includes 20 new patients at CoxHealth sites and the same number at Mercy Springfield compared to Saturday.

Frederick and Edwards say the Delta variant has contributed to a recent increase in COVID-19 admissions. In a recent report, the CDC says the highest proportion of Delta variants was detected in southwest Missouri, which accounted for nearly two-thirds of all Delta variants identified in the state.

The rising numbers follow a series of major announcements over the past week related to the local response to the pandemic.

On Monday, Mercy Springfield announced that it had run out of ventilators and would be purchasing ventilators from surrounding Mercy hospitals, including Northwest Arkansas and St. Louis.
On Tuesday, CoxHealth announced that its southwestern Missouri sites would call for the recruitment of respiratory therapists and traveling nurses to help cope with the increase in cases.
Mercy Springfield has announced that she will require all current and future workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Representatives from both health systems explained on Thursday that the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases is draining resources and reducing wait times in emergency rooms in the Ozarks.

Mercy Springfield and CoxHealth expect the COVID-19 response to become even more active in the coming weeks. Mercy is opening a sixth COVID-19 unit, a move that comes after the hospital only used five units at the height of the pandemic last year.

According to Edwards, based on the projections, CoxHealth could treat 153 to 178 patients by the end of next week, which he said is “probably well beyond our capabilities.”

As hospitalizations increase in southwest Missouri, cases of COVID-19 are also on the rise. The Springfield-Greene County Health Department has reported more than 1,500 new cases of COVID-19 since early July, including an average of 191 new cases in the past seven days.

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