State officials outlined their plans Monday to handle a likely surge of COVID-19 patients in the coming weeks.

Those plans, detailed in a news conference led by Gov. Eric Holcomb, include strategies for doubling critical care capacity at hospitals, increasing personal protective equipment and beefing up medical staffing by using retired health care workers and medical students.

Holcomb, joined by state Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box, Dr. Jennifer Sullivan, secretary of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration and other state officials, said they expect to start seeing COVID-19 patients flooding Hoosier hospitals sometime in the next two to eight weeks as the virus continues to spread across the state.

There were 1,786 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Indiana and 35 deaths as of midnight Sunday, according to the Indiana State Department of Health.

There have been eight cases reported in Jackson County.

“We believe that Indiana’s COVID-19 patient surge will begin soon, and peak surge is expected to be mid-April to mid-May,” Sullivan said. “Every hospital and hospital system in Indiana has been working on a surge plan, and we have been discussing those plans as a cross-sector group.”

Currently, Indiana has 1,940 critical care beds, or intensive care unit beds, and had 1,177 ventilators as of March 1, Sullivan said. Around 60% of critical care beds are currently in use across the state, Box said.

Currently, Schneck Medical Center in Seymour is not at capacity and has the ability to accept patients, said Stephanie Furlow, the hospital’s director of marketing.

To handle an expected surge in COVID-19 cases, however, Schneck is opening an additional five-bed unit at the hospital.

Because the virus can cause serious respiratory illness, some patients require the use of ventilators to help them breathe. Schneck currently has ventilators available for all nine beds in its intensive care unit and seven beds in the moderate adult acute care unit. The additional five-bed unit also will have ventilators, Furlow said.

Should all of those beds fill up, Furlow said other areas in the facility will be utilized to handle patient overflow. The hospital also is in talks with a hotel should the need for more rooms and beds arise.

Indiana is projected to reach its peak number of COVID-19 patients April 17 and would need an estimated additional 402 ventilators to treat the expected surge in patients, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The institute is an independent population health research center at University of Washington Medicine.

State officials said they hope to double the number of ventilators in the state, including by attempting to repurpose anesthesia machines into ventilators, state officials said.

So far, Indiana has received 85,612 surgical gowns, 126,260 N95 masks, 297,000 surgical masks, 54,720 face shields, 168,900 gloves and 216 coveralls from the National Strategic Stockpile, according to ISDH.

The state also has ordered 250,000 N95 masks, 190,000 face shields, 22,500 gowns and 10,000 goggles from Indiana-based vendors and others who have offered to help.

Currently, the Indiana Department of Correction is producing 200 gowns, mask and face shields per day.

Sullivan said hospitals can double their bed capacity by cancelling elective surgeries, turning other spaces and facilities, including operating and recovery suites, into critical care beds and ending outpatient surgeries not connected to the hospital and using those facilities for beds.

Additionally, hospital systems are coordinating with each other to share equipment in case one of them starts to run low and have devised plans to send less critical patients to alternate facilities, including neighborhood hospitals, medical clinics and unused floors of a state-run hospital in Indianapolis, state officials said.

“Our goal is to double critical care capacity and the number of ventilators to respond to the surge,” Sullivan said. “Indiana has hospitals that can already turn every bed they have into critical care beds, and we have identified those sites as possible surge sites in each region.”

One major constraint and challenge for hospitals to handle the expected surge is personnel, state officials said.

Currently, state health officials are attempting to reallocate doctors and nurses who may not usually work in critical care and train them to treat the expected onslaught of COVID-19 patients.

Additionally, certain medical students who have finished their coursework and just need to complete their residency and soon-to-graduate nurses are being sought to help with the state’s response to the outbreak, Box said.

“We will also need more clinicians. We will need them to provide care during the surge and also to provide relief to our frontline workers,” said Dr. Lindsay Weaver, chief medical officer at ISDH. “That’s why right now, we’re asking retired physicians, those clinicians who have not been working because elective surgeries have been postponed, anesthesiologists and medical trainees to step forward.”

This past weekend, state officials, through the state’s professional licensing agency and medical associations, released a survey to find additional health care workers who could help in some capacity, Weaver said.

So far, more than 5,300 health care professionals in Indiana have volunteered.

“While our immediate efforts have focused on building bed capacity and ventilators, additional surge planning has focused on designating alternate care facilities should our current efforts be exhausted,” Weaver said. “The Indiana National Guard and Indiana Department of Homeland Security, in conjunction with FEMA, are developing facilities that could be stood up in a 72- to 96-hour time frame.”

Recently closed hospitals in Michigan City and St. Joseph County have been directed to open, Sullivan said.