COVID patients are currently occupying more than half the beds at St. Joseph Mercy Livingston Hospital in Howell as the facility finds itself caring for a record number of them.
“As of this morning we had 25 confirmed COVID-19 patients under our care,” said Bobby Moldanado, regional communications and public relations manager for Saint Joseph Mercy Health System. “It’s the largest number of COVID-19 patients at our hospital since the pandemic began,” .
Because of this surge, St. Joseph Mercy Livingston made the decision to transfer a small number of scheduled elective surgeries to its sister hospital, St. Mary Mercy Livonia, which had enough patient beds available for post-surgery recovery.
Of the patients hospitalized at SJML, 17 were unvaccinated and one was partially vaccinated, which means 7 patients experienced breakthrough infections.
“The COVID-19 virus is in the Livingston County community and it is spreading,” Moldanado said. “We ask that every member of our community get vaccinated if they qualify for the vaccine. We also ask members of our community get their COVID-19 booster if they qualify for one.”
The number of COVID cases in the community continues to rise, and it has been designated a high-transmission county. For the week of Nov. 1-7, there were an average of nearly 100 new COVID cases a day, according to the Livingston County Health Department.
Here is how Livingston County’s numbers look in graph form:
