‘Close to 1,000’ Cleveland Clinic caregivers infected with Covid-19, says hospital official

The Cleveland Clinic’s Chief Caregiver Officer Kelly Hancock urged her community to follow social distancing and mask guidelines as Covid-19 grips hundreds of those working inside of one of America’s best hospitals. 

“We had a record today, we saw nearly 12,000 new cases in the state of Ohio of Covid-positive patients, and so when you think about the increase and the hospitalizations that results in, it’s incredible,” Hancock said during a Monday evening interview on “The News with Shepard Smith.”  “We’re experiencing close to 1,000 of our caregivers who’ve been affected by Covid-19, and unable to come in and care for those patients.” 

The Cleveland Clinic reported that 970 caregivers are out due to the virus, triple the number from two weeks ago. In the greater Cleveland area, Covid-19 cases are on the rise, according to the Ohio Department of Health. There was an average of 83 new cases between September 23-29, but between November 11-17 the average was 1,134 new cases. 

Hancock told host Shepard Smith that despite the infections of its health-care workers, that the Cleveland Clinic is still able to uphold its standard of care for patients. 

“Right now we have adequate staffing, we’re able to mobilize our caregivers to the areas they’re needed most, but we continue to meet frequently throughout the day to continue to assess the situation for both our caregivers, as well as the bed capacity,” Hancock said. 

The United States recorded more than 3 million new coronavirus cases this month alone. That’s a quarter of all the country’s cases to date, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins data. The U.S. has averaged 1,500 deaths per day over the past week, which is an average of more than one death every minute for the past week. 

Hospitalizations have been up for 29 straight days, and over that time, the number of people hospitalized for the virus doubled, according to the Covid Tracking Project. Hancock urged that America’s health-care workers need all the help they can get right now. She advised people to avoid large gatherings during the holidays, to wear masks appropriately, and frequent hand washing.

“All of this is really concerning for all of us and we need to do all of this to ensure that we can keep our caregivers at work,” said Hancock.