Spectrum Health

Beginning Monday, January 25th DeVos Place convention center will serve as a central COVID-19 vaccination location called the West Michigan Vaccine Clinic at DeVos Place.

It’s a collaboration between the Kent County Health Department, Spectrum Health and Mercy Health.

“A key part of this new clinic is that we can truly scale it to give thousands of vaccines a day to community members.”

Dr. Darryl Elmouchi is President, Spectrum Health West Michigan. He explains that while the current vaccine supply is limited its distribution will be increasing.

The state of Michigan is expanding its COVID-19 vaccination eligibility to adults over the age of 65. The expanded coverage also includes teachers and childcare workers. In West Michigan the distribution is restricted to supply received. Spectrum Health expects to administer more than 21,000 vaccinations this week.

“Demand is truly astronomical as you can imagine.”

Dr. Darryl Elmouchi is President Spectrum Health West Michigan.

Grand Rapids-based Spectrum Health received its first shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine early Monday morning and began vaccinating staff at 12:04pm. 

Per Center for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, frontline hospital workers across the country are receiving the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

At Spectrum Health the first groups getting the shots are the Emergency Room, Intensive Care and COVID-19 Units.

“So far, I feel fine. Not even a sore arm. It’s been about three-and-a-half hours.”

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services projects a doubling of new COVID-19 hospitalization in the next two-weeks. Spectrum Health addressed the projection during its weekly COVID media briefing.

Spectrum Health’s labs have routinely conducted roughly 4,000 COVID-19 tests per day. The test positivity rate on a rolling seven-day average of 18.6%. That means COVID is rapidly spreading throughout the community.

As area hospitals near capacity with an influx of COVID-19 patients, what happens when capacity is reached? 

Spectrum Health is using computer models factoring in bed and staff capacity along with length of stay. Those models say the hospital will reach traditional capacity constraints soon.

"And so, we’re taking proactive action to expand into other areas to make sure that we have that we have that room.”

Tina Freese Decker is President and CEO of Spectrum Health.

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Spectrum Health says it will only test for COVID-19 in patients showing symptoms.

Spectrum Health conducts roughly 4,000 COVID-19 tests daily. But with increasing demand as the virus spreads exponentially, the hospital is prioritizing symptomatic patients and not people who’ve been exposed to it.

“The rationale for this is, number one, we want to make sure those symptomatic patients get tested. And number two, we want to make sure that our testing turnaround times remain short so those tests are actually actionable.”

The spike in COVID-19 cases is reaching a tipping point for area hospitals. Spectrum Health officials Wednesday announced it’s a matter of days when hospital systems across the state reach capacity.

They’re warning the trajectory of community spread must change or the situation will turn dire.

“We are facing some of the most daunting and demanding challenges since this pandemic began.”

COVID-19 cases are spiking what can you do to improve your body’s immunity?

You’ve heard it by now many times by now that people with underlying health conditions are most at-risk to COVID-19 and chronic diseases are often the result of poor diet quality.

“Diet that’s eaten day-in-and-day-out that’s deficient in what we would call micronutrients, or key vitamins and minerals help our body to have an optimally functioning immune system.”

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