Indiana hit a grim record Tuesday when the state reported 84 new deaths from COVID-19, the largest number of deaths from the virus in a single day since the pandemic began in March.
Locally, two new deaths were reported, bringing Jackson County’s death toll to 31.
Positive cases in the county increased by 47 to 1,780 from Monday’s reported total. This is the largest number of positive cases in a single day for the county. The previous record was 46 on Nov. 9 and 12.
Dr. Eric Fish, president and chief executive officer of Schneck Medical Center in Seymour, said the situation continues to worsen.
The hospital has been on critical care diversion for the past 48 hours, which means it has no intensive care unit beds available, so critically ill or injured patients are being sent to other hospitals, he said.
There are currently eight Schneck patients on ventilators, Fish added.
“Obviously, things continue to escalate, both nationally and within the state and locally here within the community,” he said Tuesday during the hospital’s weekly community COVID update.
The increase in positive COVID cases has forced Schneck to begin evaluating its daily overnight surgical and in-patient cases that are elective or nonurgent.
“Today is the first day we postponed nonurgent cases due to capacity issues,” he said.
Staffing at the hospital continues to be an issue, too, due to those in quarantine or isolation, he said.
“Not only COVID but also other medical conditions continue to create capacity issues,” he said, “Here at Schneck, we are at 70% capacity, so things are full. Somewhat of a grim picture right now due to COVID within the hospitals.”
The county’s seven-day positivity rate fell slightly to 12.4% from 13.1% on Monday. The current positivity rate is for Nov. 4 through 10.
Positivity rate is determined by a seven-day moving average with a six-day lag. It is calculated by dividing the total number of positive tests by the total number of tests administered. The reason for the lag is to give time to receive comprehensive results.
Jackson County is classified as a Level 2 county, putting it at an orange or heightened warning level for COVID-19 spread.
An orange level county is classified between 10 and 14.9% with a red level being above 15%. A red level county is classified as a 3. A county can be categorized at a 2.5 level if a positivity rate is increasing toward a red level.
Schneck has tested a total of 6,107 patients with 913 being positive, Fish said.
There have been 20,929 tests administered overall in Jackson County since March 18.
An additional 5,541 Hoosiers tested positive Tuesday for the virus through testing at the Indiana State Department of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and private laboratories.
This brings to 262,207 the total number of Indiana residents known to have had the novel coronavirus following corrections to the previous day’s total.
The state’s total number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 is 4,770.
For the state, a total of 3,612,076 tests have been administered, an increase of 42,264 tests since Monday’s report.
The results are as of 11:59 p.m. Monday. The ISDH’s coronavirus dashboard is updated at noon daily.