Gov. Eric Holcomb announced Monday afternoon that he has extended his “hunker down Hoosiers” stay-at-home order until May 1.
The updated order, however, lifted restrictions on some nonessential medical procedures. Starting today, medical facilities may resume nonemergent procedures done to screen and treat some medical conditions. Examples include diagnosing cardiac issues or cancer, upper/lower endoscopy or respiratory procedures or procedures to reduce pain.
Holcomb said upon re-evaluation, if supplies of personal protective equipment remain adequate, other restrictions placed on elective medical procedures could be lifted.
During the briefing, Joe Heerens, general counsel to the governor, provided an update on complaints received by the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration regarding businesses violating the order about non-essential be open for business.
Heerens said over the last two weeks, 982 complaints were received, 862 of them were discovered to be unfounded following investigation, 74 businesses were warned of violation and no businesses that were reported had been ordered to close.
Dr. Kristina Box, the state’s health commissioner, provided some positive news about where the COVID-19 numbers currently stand versus where they were projected to be.
“I’m not 100% sure we’ve reached our peak. I think that I’ll be interested to see what our modeling shows this week,” she said. “What it has shown is that consistently, we are running much lower than the original projections, and we are running very much closer to along the lowest expected line.”
Box also discussed the lack of statistics showing COVID-19 recoveries, stating the number is difficult to accurately track.
“The biggest problem with recovery is that there are so many individuals out there that have fallen ill but have mild illnesses,” she said. “That 80% that we knew just kind of stayed home until their fever went away, their cough got better. Those are recovered patients.”
This news came during Holcomb’s daily public briefing, which can be viewed on his Facebook page at 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The Indiana State Department of Health on Monday announced 505 additional Hoosiers have been diagnosed with COVID-19 through testing at the department, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and private laboratories.
That brings to 11,686 the total number of Hoosier residents known to have the novel coronavirus following corrections to the previous day’s total.
Jackson County has a total of 89 cases, which is a decrease of one from the previous total. This decrease is due to corrections frequently made to case totals.
A total of 569 Hoosiers have died to date. Deaths are reported based on when data are received by ISDH and occurred over multiple days.
Jackson County has yet to report a death as a result of the virus although Jennings County’s first death was reported over the weekend.
To date, 64,649 tests have been reported to ISDH, up from 61,142 on Sunday.
Jackson County has had 439 residents reported as tested.
Nationwide, there have been 749,999 confirmed cases, 35,012 deaths and 70,337 recoveries, according to statistics from Johns Hopkins University.