​​​COLUMBUS, Ohio — Hospitals in Ohio are so overwhelmed by COVID-19 that some patients are being seen in waiting rooms, health officials said Friday.

What You Need To Know

• Ohio is reporting record COVID-19 hospitalizations and staggeringly high positivity rates


• The surge is peaking in the Cleveland area, while other regions may be a couple weeks behind


• Hospitals are delaying more elective surgeries to address the record-breaking virus surge

The Cleveland, Akron and Canton areas are reporting the highest patient volumes in the state, but central Ohio hospitalizations have also reached record levels, and officials expect the surge to continue to move south in the next couple weeks. 

The Cleveland Clinic is sending health care staff out into the waiting rooms at some of its hospitals to see patients as they wait for emergency room beds, Dr. Robert Wyllie, the health system’s chief medical operations officer, confirmed during an Ohio Department of Health news conference. 

“The reason that some people are being seen in the waiting room is because there's not additional rooms in the emergency department,” Wylie said. “We’ve put our staff out in the waiting areas to triage them to make sure we're not missing anybody who's having a heart attack and needs immediate intervention, or has symptoms of a stroke, or who needs oxygen therapy because they have COVID.”

Northern Ohio hospitals, which are receiving support from the Ohio National Guard, are making decisions to cancel elective outpatient surgeries that do not require a hospital stay in order to shift staff to care for hospitalized patients, Wylie said. Previously, Ohio hospitals had only halted elective surgeries that could require an overnight stay in a hospital bed. 

In central Ohio, all of the hospitals jointly halted elective surgeries requiring an inpatient bed on Thursday, a measure that will remain in effect for at least two weeks, Ohio State Wexner’s chief clinical officer Dr. Andrew Thomas said.

Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said the state is in the middle of an “omicron tsunami” that is crushing hospitals. 

“The reality is that on the ground right now, Ohio is facing a historic challenge in terms of the incredible demands and pressure placed upon our hospitals,” Vanderhoff said. “This is as serious as we have seen, and our hospitals are having to go through extraordinary efforts to be able to provide beds and the needed care to the sickest patients across our state.”

As of the latest update Thursday, a record 6,540 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Ohio, while 1,314 patients were receiving care in intensive units.

The omicron variant is causing less severe disease than previous strains of the virus, but Vanderhoff said the raw volume of infections is stressing the state’s health care system, with about 20,000 people testing positive each day, nearly twice as high as the previous record last winter.

“With so many people getting infected and still about a third of our population lacking the protection of vaccines, it's little surprise that we're seeing unprecedented numbers of hospitalizations,” Vanderhoff said.

At Ohio State and the Cleveland Clinic, medical staff cheered the news that the Ohio National Guard was coming in to help the state's hospitals, Thomas and Wylie said. 

Working in teams of 10, more than 1,200 members of the Ohio National Guard have been deployed to support hospitals, and more than 1,000 additional guard members will be deployed by early next week, Ohio Adjutant General Maj. Gen. John Harris, Jr. said.

About 140 service members are part of medical teams working at the bedside, while the majority are performing non-clinical tasks for hospitals — preparing and running trays, cleaning surfaces, turning beds and operating testing sates, Harris said.

The Cleveland Clinic said nearly all of the COVID-19 cases that it currently detects are the omicron variant. 

“It's starting to wipe out delta,” Wylie said. “We're seeing very few delta cases at this time.”  

The hospital's latest analysis showed that 75% of its patients hospitalized for COVID-19 are unvaccinated, while an even higher percentage of patients in intensive-care units and on ventilators have not been vaccinated.

At new mass testing sites supported by the Ohio National Guard, officials are reporting staggering positivity rates. At the Walker Building testing site in Cleveland, more than 38% of tests are coming back positivity, and the new testing site in Columbus is reporting a greater than 40% positivity rate, officials said. 

In Cuyahoga County, officials believe that cases have peaked, giving them some hope that they’ll soon see hospitalizations decline. The health system has been missing about 3,000 non-clinical staff members each day due to COVID-19 quarantines, but staffing numbers are beginning to improve, especially with the isolation period being shortened to five days, Wylie said.

Thomas said the worst is likely still to come in central Ohio, which he believes is 10-14 days behind northern Ohio in terms of COVID-19 numbers peaking. The southwestern Ohio region appears to be about 10-14 days behind central Ohio, he said. Modeling shows that Ohio’s omicron surge is expected to peak near the end of the month, Thomas said.

Officials said the situation with the virus is very grim, but they have hope that the rapid spread of the omicron variant will be followed by significant declines in virus numbers as the population gets more immunity.

“We're keeping our fingers crossed that the same decline that they saw in South Africa, that we will see a decline, maybe not as sharp, but we hope to see a steady decline, and I think we've got the first inkling of that in northern Ohio right now,” Wylie said.