Henry Ford Health senior doctor worries about rise in COVID-19 deaths in Michigan

STRAIT – Michigan announced 8,516 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, breaking a previous day’s record of more than 1,500 cases.

The state also reported 118 new deaths, including 83 as a result of a civil registration check.

A week ago on Friday, Michigan reported 3,700 new cases, so the total is more than double. The fast the spread of the virus does not slow down despite terrible warnings from experts and hospital managers.

Experts are urging everyone listening to stay home and stay safe, but the message just doesn’t seem to get to Michigan residents.

Dr Adnan Munkarah, chief medical officer at Henry Ford Health, is worried about the possibility of deaths from COVID-19 skipping.

“From a national data perspective, we’ve had almost 1,200 deaths in the past 24 hours,” Munkarah said. “In Michigan, we are seeing almost 50 deaths per day over the past week. Really, very disappointing data, and we continue to pray and hope that we will make progress and try to stop both the spread of the disease and the deaths from this disease. “

In recent weeks, the rate of people testing positive has increased from around 3% to 13%. A shortage of testing supplies is also becoming an issue nationwide and in Michigan.

“In fact, in 100% of our tests, we didn’t get the results within 24 hours,” Munkarah said. “It has now grown to around 36 to 46 hours because of this supply shortage.”

Today, 23% of COVID-19 patients are in Henry Ford’s intensive care units, which have reached 80-90% capacity. This is a major concern for health officials.

The number of ventilators is currently not an issue due to what doctors have learned about treating COVID-19 during the life of this pandemic.

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“In the spring, that belief at that time was that everyone should go on the fan early because it provides a better result,” Munkarah said. “We have learned that this is not the case, and therefore, we intervene with medical interventions, including high oxygen therapy before a patient is put on a ventilator.

Henry Ford Health System doctors are very excited about another potential vaccine they are working on, which adds to the Pfizer vaccine which seemed promising.