On national holiday, hospital staff wearily keep working

NEW BERN, N.C. (WITN) - Many essential health care staff spent their Martin Luther King Jr. Day holidays tending to sick patients.

“This is when we tend to get busy in the hospital, even if we didn’t have COVID,” Dr. Ron May, CarolinaEast Medical Center medical affairs vice president said.

May said CarolinaEast has a substantial number of people in its hospital with COVID. While it’s not the highest amount they’ve seen during the pandemic, the number is still closer to the record than it is the lowest number.

“It’s in the top third of where we’ve been and yeah, I hope it doesn’t keep going up, but there’s a pretty good chance it will. It was just a week and 10 days ago we were at 30,” May said.

May believes Eastern North Carolina is approaching the middle of the current Omicron surge, which is why more people are sick, including CarolinaEast employees.

Experts repeat the best way to stay out of the hospital is to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

However, as May said, the immunity gained through both infection and the shot could get us somewhere.

According to the hospital, 49 people were at CarolinaEast with COVID-19 Monday morning, 30 of whom are unvaccinated.

Copyright 2022 WITN. All rights reserved.