COVID-19 hospitalizations set new peak over weekend

Indiana’s hospitals had more COVID-19 patients than ever before over the Thanksgiving weekend and the number under intensive care unit treatment also continued its recent steep increase.

The Indiana State Department of Health’s daily update on Monday also reported 38 more coronavirus deaths occurring over the past several days.

Those newly recorded deaths come as the state’s seven-day rolling average of COVID-19 deaths has surged to 56 per day as of last week — more than five times the rate in late September and pushing it well ahead of the early pandemic peak of 42 a day in April.

November has been Indiana’s deadliest COVID-19 month and health officials have repeatedly raised concerns about Thanksgiving gatherings leading to another surge in cases. Hospital officials across the state are worried about being overwhelmed by the quickly growing number of severely ill patients.

Indiana hospitals were treating 3,401 COVID-19 patients as of Sunday — about a 350% increase since late September when Gov. Eric Holcomb lifted nearly all business and crowd size restrictions before reinstating some limits in mid-November.

On the State Department of Health’s dashboard Monday, Lake County reported 462 new cases, but no deaths.

The county’s totals have reached 29,183 cases and 469 deaths.

According to the state on Monday, Porter County’s cases total was 8,906 with 173 new cases. There have been 90 fatalities, including one new one on Monday’s dashboard.

Hospital intensive care units had nearly 970 coronavirus patients on Sunday, a number that has doubled in little more than a month.

The state’s District 1, which includes Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Jasper and Newton counties, currently has 41.2% of ICU beds in use for COVID-19 patients.

Indiana has now recorded 5,723 corona virus deaths, including both those with confirmed and presumed infections.