City leaders warn holiday celebrations, travel could lead to continued spike in COVID cases

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Louisville is seeing a huge increase in COVID-19 cases, and officials say travel and the holidays will only make it worse.

The major hospitals in our area, including Norton, U of L and Baptist, say they're able to handle the increase in COVID-19 patients right now but they warn it will begin to get tough if we don't make changes.

"There will always be a breaking point," said Dr. Jason Smith with UofL Health. "I think we are doing a good job across the three healthcare systems in managing this right now, but sooner or later if the numbers continue to rise, it's a simple matter of numbers, in that you will eventually overwhelm the healthcare system no matter how well prepared and how much they're working."

During his weekly news conference Tuesday morning, Mayor Greg Fischer invited officials with Louisville's hospitals to join the weekly COVID update with Louisville's Health Department Director Dr. Sarah Moyer.

Hospital officials say right now around 15 percent of their patients are COVID patients. All three healthcare systems say they have plenty of capacity but say they are definitely seeing increases.

Dr. Moyer says since the beginning of October through Nov. 16, there has been a 510 percent increase in hospitalizations. Louisville now has nearly 340 people in the hospital fighting the virus.

Moyer said that correlates to the 250 percent increase in average daily cases for the same timeframe. Health officials believe that increase will only get worse in the coming weeks as students come home from school and families travel for the holidays.

City leaders also talked about testing in Louisville, saying demand remains high but turnaround time for results has consistently been about 48 hours.