GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The highly contagious omicron variant is hitting nursing staff at local hospitals hard.
In an interview posted on Spectrum Health's Facebook page Dr. Darryl Elmouchi, President of Spectrum Health West talks about the severity of the omicron outbreak on staff, "Over the last week, maybe eight days across all of the spectrum health hospitals, we've had nearly 1000 team members test positive. That's a lot of people. And thankfully, because we have so many that are vaccinated, we've seen very few significant illnesses. And thankfully, no one over the last week has been hospitalized amongst our team." Spectrum Health says that's 2.5% of their workforce.
Spectrum Health has been approved to continue using 22 Department of Defense nurses to help ease their staffing issues for the next month.
Mercy Health says they are also being hit hard. Out of 2,369 nurses 112 of them are currently out with COVID-19.
Dr. Justin Grill, Chief Medical Officer Mercy Health Muskegon says they are using clinical and non-clinical colleagues to help support staff, "There's no question that the almost crown related surge is providing pressure on our staffing, not just from nurses but from all aspects of health care, as everyone is exposed to all omicron throughout various community and family activities, we're having large numbers of staff from multiple different areas nursing included that are off of work because of either exposure, high risk exposure to or actually catching on with time."
Mercy Health Muskegon is supporting their staff with traveling nurses and the 17 Department of Defense nurses.
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