BY NICK MARSICO, MAGRUDER HOSPITAL

My name is Nick Marsico. I’m the President & CEO of Magruder Hospital. I’m a pharmacist by training, but that does not make me an expert in Covid-19 or infectious disease.

It does provide me with a background when evaluating medical and scientific information, which helps me sift through the information and misinformation that’s out for everyone to consume.

I’m writing this to tell a factual story regarding how COVID is currently affecting our local health and wellness and economies in the communities we serve. The potential to spread the disease is extremely high right now. According to the Ohio Department of Health, the incidence of Covid-19 in Ottawa County over the previous 14 days is 508 per 100,0001, which is over 10 times greater than when we “reopened” in June 2021.

In June, July, and August 2021 we had more patients at Magruder Hospital get admitted and discharged than any three months since the summer of 2014.

Over the past three weeks, almost every area hospital from Lorain to West Toledo has experienced maximum capacity at some point, meaning they were unable to accept patients for admission or transfer and may have even turned EMS away.

We have had tremendous difficulty in finding beds for our sickest patients, and we are being asked to take sick patients from outside of our area on a regular basis.

Capacity for this point is defined as “staffed beds.” Anyone can make an argument that a hospital listed as a 100-bed hospital should have 100 beds available. The reality is that in our current environment, with workforce shortages and staff illnesses, most hospitals cannot staff to full listed capacity. Hospitals define capacity based on how many patients they can safely and effectively care for, not by listed beds.

A total of 77% of Covid-19 positive hospitalized patients at Magruder Hospital over the last month have been unvaccinated. At Firelands in Sandusky that number is around 79%, and at Fisher Titus in Norwalk that number is 92%.