CLEVELAND — Cleveland Clinic has announced its intention to resume non-essential surgeries that require an overnight hospital stay in Ohio on Monday, January 4, 2021.
In addition, the Clinic says it will reactivate surgical care at its Marymount Ambulatory Surgery Center.
In its release announcing the resumption of non-essential surgeries, the Clinic notes that recently there has been a plateau in daily admissions of patients with COVID-19 to its nursing units, as well as a decrease in its preoperative COVID-19 positivity rates.
"We will continue to monitor our scheduled surgical cases based on hospital bed capacity and caregiver support as we begin 2021," the Clinic wrote in its statement. "We are still caring for a significant number of patients with COVID-19; however, we currently have the ability and capacity to serve all of our patients while safely resuming our surgical services."
As the number of cases spiked in late November, Cleveland Clinic announced on December 2 that it would postpone nonessential inpatient surgeries requiring a hospital bed or ICU bed in Ohio from Dec. 7, 2020 through Jan. 4. 2021. The only exception was Lutheran Hospital. On November 23, one Cleveland Clinic doctor told Ohio Governor Mike DeWine that nearly 1,000 healthcare workers were unable to work due to exposure or contraction of COVID-19.
In the past two weeks, the Clinic has begun administering both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine to its healthcare workers.
On Tuesday, the Ohio Department of Health reported 7,526 new cases of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours with 151 new deaths and 560 new hospitalizations.
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Editor's Note: The below story aired on December 18, 2020