Remember when Gov. Walz put a six-week pause on indoor dining along with other restrictions as a way to ease the COVID-sized burder on the state’s health care industry?
One physician who has been knee-deep in treating coronavirus patients suggests those orders were the right thing to do.
“Around Thanksgiving time, the first week of December, it was a mess,” said HCMC’s Dr. David Hilden on the WCCO Morning News with Dave Lee. “Our hospital basically had no (available) beds.”
Hilden said now, in the first full week of the New Year, he’s treating the fewest COVID-19 patients in weeks.
“Our bed situation has loosened up a little bit, we have staff, and I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said.
Cautious for good reason.
With the holidays came larger indoor gatherings and lots of people traveling around the country, which likely means a surge in cases in the not too distant future.
“It would be a little bit too early for hospitaliations,” Dr.
Hilden said. “It it likely, at least we have to prepare ourselves (for) late January or early February. We can’t be naive, that’s likely to happen.”
Dr. Hilden said vaccinating health care workers in Minnesota has gone well so far, but he does wish it was going a little faster.
He said staffers at HCMC are already receiving their second dose of the vaccine.
“We’re not seeing any side-effects, people are tolerating it,” he said, noting that the next wave of vaccines for other essential workers and the elderly needs to go faster to speed up the schedule of getting shots to everyday Americans.
Until that happens, masks and social distancing is still a top priority, and Dr. Hilden said it does appear Minnesotans are taking those things seriously.
“Minnesotans are doing the right thing,” he said. “If we let our guard down too much, things can get worse.”
