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Minnesota hospitals are as full now as they were in late 2020

Health officials are stressing the importance of vaccinations, including booster doses for fully vaccinated adults.

ST PAUL, Minn. — The latest COVID-19 surge in Minnesota is showing no signs of slowing. The latest data from the Minnesota Department of Health shows more than 1,300 people are currently hospitalized because of the virus statewide.

Those numbers are putting a big strain on hospitals, with some regions reporting they have zero staffed ICU beds available.

All eight HealthPartners hospitals located across Minnesota and western Wisconsin have been running at 95% to 105% capacity over the last two months, and above 100% capacity within the last week, the hospital system reported Thursday.

HealthPartners senior medical director and infectious disease specialist Dr. Mark Sannes, says emergency rooms are filled with patients. 

"Patients who normally would pass through in a couple of hours to their hospital bed [are] now sitting there for a day, or two days," he said.

Sannes says hospitals are as crowded now as they were at the end of last year — at the peak of the pandemic — when vaccines were not available to most of the public.

Hospitals in Itasca County are similarly packed.

"There is absolutely no sugar-coating the fact that in Itasca, like much of Minnesota, [we] are in trouble right now," public health division manager Kelly Chandler said during a press briefing Thursday.

Sannes says in order to manage the influx of patients, HeathPartners hospitals are having to prioritize certain cases over others. 

"What we've done to try to create room for that greater demand of the non-COVID business, is take anybody that has a surgery or a procedure that's going to require an overnight hospital stay, and if it isn't something that's in that sort of first group of high-priority cases that is going to put them in harm's way or potentially cause damage to them, delaying those things to create more room in the hospitals so that you can take care of not only the folks that have non-COVID illnesses that need to be hospitalized, but also that growing number of COVID patients that continue to show up in our emergency rooms," Sannes said.

Sannes says one-third to one-fourth of patients are fully vaccinated adults experiencing breakthrough infections bad enough to be hospitalized.

"If you're in that booster group that ... could qualify for a booster dose, please get it because that group, there's going to be a portion of those folks that won't require hospitalization because of that decision," he said.

Minnesota is expected to allow all fully vaccinated adults to start getting booster shots by the end of this week.

In the meantime, health officials are urging people who have not been vaccinated at all to start.

"Of the 170 patients that we have hospitalized with COVID, we have over 100 beds that could be opened up if people had chosen to be vaccinated in the last three months and not landed in this position now, so these are preventable hospitalizations for at least two-thirds of our patients," Sannes said.

Health officials are also encouraging everyone to drive safely this holiday season to avoid crashes and subsequent hospital visits.

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