Pritzker urges hospitals to postpone non-emergency surgeries as COVID cases rise

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Health and Hospital Association on Thursday urged hospitals to postpone non-emergency surgeries and other procedures because of the rise in omicron COVID patients.

“Throughout Illinois, hospital admissions are rapidly increasing, further diminishing ICU bed capacity,” the governor’s office said in a news release. “Holiday gatherings are anticipated to drive an increase in the coming weeks, placing an additional strain on Illinois’ hospitals and health care workers.”

St. Clair County leaders on Wednesday said hospitals in the county are nearing capacity with all of the coronavirus patients they are treating.

County hospitals had 90 COVID patients, with 69 of them unvaccinated as of Wednesday.

Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, urged Illinoisans to get vaccinated.

“We are currently seeing approximately 500 new admissions a day to Illinois hospitals due to COVID-19, and approximately 90% of those are unvaccinated,” Ezike said in the news release. “There is a health care worker shortage in Illinois, in the U.S., and across the world. We’re seeing health care workers leave the profession because they are burnt out after watching people suffer severe illness and even death for almost two years now.”

The hospital association said there are 5,000 COVID patients in hospitals statewide and most of them had not been vaccinated.