MICHIGAN — As soon as Dr. Rob Davidson finished his shift Monday night, he posted a video to his Twitter account telling his thousands of followers what he just saw.
“I’ve had a few days off, but it has just exploded in the last few days in our hospital and I know in so many hospitals here in West Michigan,” Dr. Davidson said in the video while sitting in his vehicle. “We’re like five times the number of inpatients with COVID that we had just a few weeks ago.”
Dr. Davidson is an emergency room doctor and the executive director of the Committee to Protect Medicare. During an interview with FOX 17 on Tuesday afternoon, he said hospitalizations were increasing among people in their 20s, 30s and 40s. He believes it's because most people over 60 have been fully vaccinated.
“Right now, in Michigan we’re back where we were around Thanksgiving, the big surge that we had at the end of last year heading into January where we were seeing multiple hospitals around West Michigan—and smaller hospitals like ones where I work—filling up,” Dr. Davidson said. “I had a partner who worked the other day who said that of the nine people he tested, all nine were positive. I think I had a 60 percent positivity rate of folks I tested yesterday.”
Spoke with Dr. Rob today about #COVID19 and he says it’s just as bad as it was back during the Thanksgiving surge.#WearAMask he says!
— Lauren Edwards (@LaurenEdwardsTV) April 13, 2021
Story coming up on @FOX17 (📺 & 👩🏽💻) at 4/5/6p. https://t.co/wdXZY3JmlY
Dr. Davidson said he doesn’t know for sure if the reason behind the surge is the B.1.1.7 variant that originated in the United Kingdom. However, test results and research at the University of Michigan show that the strain is becoming more prevalent in new cases.
“Folks that get admitted are still very sick, you know: low oxygen, severely dehydrated,” he said. “We’re hoping that the death numbers don’t follow that same pattern. But, we would rather not have to find that out. We would rather stop these increased cases from coming in the first place.”
So, he recommended people get vaccinated as soon as they can. Tuesday, Michigan joined a number of states pausing the usage of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to reports that it's connected to rare blood clots.However, he said no one should wait to get vaccinated. He’s treating patients who waited too long and ended up getting infected with COVID.
He also stressed the importance of following CDC guidelines in order to curb the spread of the disease.
“Keep wearing masks,” Dr. Davidson emphasized. “I know there’s a such a ridiculous politicization of mask wearing, but it's such a simple thing to do, and it has been shown to be effective. That’s one piece. The other piece is for people to get vaccinated.”
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