CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Clinic announced they will be postponing any nonessential surgery that requires a hospital bed.
Starting on Wednesday, any scheduled nonessential surgeries requiring a hospital bed at Ohio hospitals, with the exception of Lutheran Hospital, will be postponed until Friday, Dec. 17.
The Clinic said the nonessential cases will be safely rescheduled for a later date.
The Clinic released the following statement:
"It is important to understand that our hospitals and emergency departments remain open to care for our community. Essential and urgent surgeries, as well as heart, cancer, pediatric and transplantation surgeries, and outpatient surgeries not requiring a hospital bed will continue to be scheduled during this time period.
"We will continue to evaluate our scheduled surgical patients as the pandemic continues.
"We continue to urge our communities to take precautions and receive their COVID-19 vaccine, as the majority of our patients hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated."
This announcement comes less than a week after the hospital system announced that they would be halting scheduling non-urgent surgeries until Jan. 3
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As of Tuesday, 4,203 hospital patients across the state had COVID-19 with 1,097 in the ICU.
Only 18% of ICU beds are available in hospitals across the state.
