Community leaders held a COVID-19 press conference Friday for the first time since March. Amid increased spread of the virus, IU Health is asking the public to resume some pandemic habits.
“We’ve become a bit complacent and all of us are pretty tired about worrying about the virus,” said IU Health’s south-central region president Brian Shockney.
Shockney said most people don’t have to worry about hospitalization, but it’s important to limit the spread of COVID-19 to protect at-risk community members.
“Even if you’re vaccinated, the spread of this virus is increasing across our communities,” Shockney said.
IU Health south central region currently has 31 patients with the primary diagnosis of COVID-19.
“This means there are 30 less beds that we would normally have for patients that require hospitalization,” he said.
Eleven of the hospitalized patients are unvaccinated; 20 are vaccinated. However, Shockney said most vaccinated patients are comorbid.
“This is a new stage of COVID-19, but we’ve known that certain steps help protect ourselves and others from the disease,” he said. “We need to get back into our pandemic habits.”
He said it’s still important to get vaccinated and boosted, isolate when positive, and wear a mask in public, especially indoors.
Shockney said IU Health is looking forward to variant-specific vaccines later this year.
