MUSKEGON, Mich. — Michigan's Chief Health Executive Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian urged the state to get vaccinated as scientists had their hands full tracking yet another variant.
The strain on West Michigan hospitals, meanwhile, had shown few signs of easing.
As Mercy Health's consolidation project has been delayed, the new morgue space is currently under construction.
Until construction is complete, Mercy Health Muskegon is using refrigerated trucks as temporary, overflow space in addition to the current morgue.
“Images like refrigerator trucks are devastating because what they mean is that we're having people get hurt, that didn't need to be hurt,” said Dr. Andrew Jameson, Mercy Health West Michigan’s division chief of infectious diseases and medical director of infection prevention and control.
It came as the state’s vaccination rate lagged behind the national average by several percentage points, a fact highlighted by Bagdasarian during an appearance on Good Morning America.
“We had hoped never to see a surge the way we did last winter again, and we are right back where we were in the winter of 2020. So, very unfortunate,” Bagdasarian said. “We have the tools, we've got boosters, we have vaccines, we've got therapeutics, but unfortunately, I think the message just simply isn't hitting home with a lot of people.”
No better way to convey that message, Mercy said, than with the data.
Exhausted hospital workers secured a bit of breathing room Monday with a slight downtrend from that recent all-time high patient census.
That count hovered in the upper 60s ahead of press-time, though executives didn’t then expect the respite to last for any length of time.
“I've seen three 40-year-old dads who are primarily the caregivers for their kids, they don't have anybody else taking care of them, and they are sick as heck right now,” Jameson related. “They're scared about what might happen. And so, bad things are happening to people still. And it's scary, and it's hard.”
Concerns over the omicron variant, meanwhile, though no reason to panic, according to Mercy, threatened to further derail the recovery.
National experts have called early data with regard to omicron’s severity encouraging, despite the variant’s enhanced transmissibility.
Editors Note: A previous version of this story said the refrigerator trucks were brought in due to the morgue running out of space but that has since been corrected. We apologize for the error.
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