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Local hospitals filling up with younger COVID-19 cases

Right now, experts say this fourth wave could last as long as four to five months.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Across West Michigan, hospitals are filling up once again with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients taking up a growing number of beds.

And staff at Mercy Health are tired.

"The exhaustion and the mental fatigue and the brutalness of watching people get sick and some people dying that don't need to is really hard," says Dr. Andrew Jameson, an infectious disease doctor at Mercy Health.

Right now, both Spectrum Health and Mercy Health are approaching their highest COVID patient totals. Spectrum currently has 303, compared to 350 at this time last year. Mercy has 97, its peak being 221.

"And what we've seen is an evolution of who is getting COVID, how they're getting COVID and how sick they're getting," says Jameson.

He says the demographic changed largely due to the when the delta variant cropped up.

"It hit us right when kids were going back to school," says Jameson.

The age group has shifted far younger.

"People in their 20s, 30s and 40s are some of the sickest we're dealing with," says Jameson.

And they are getting sicker than they ever did before.

"I have a 21-year-old on a ventilator right now that is heartbreaking," says Jameson. "And we have people with young kids that are tremendously sick and may not make it."

And no matter what age the patients are, Dr. Jameson says nearly all of them have one thing in common: They are unvaccinated.

"The vast majority of people that are most critically ill that I am seeing and that have life-threatening COVID are all unvaccinated," says Jameson. "Unequivocally, without a doubt, there's no ifs, ands or buts there."

Right now, experts say this fourth wave could last as long as four to five months.

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