Courtesy Photo An employee with MidMichigan Medical Center-Alpena puts on their personal protective equipment in this photo shared by MidMichigan Health on Monday.

ALPENA — MidMichigan Medical Center-Alpena officials are seeing a “significant increase” in the number of patients being admitted for COVID-19.

Hospital President Chuck Sherwin said on Monday of the 70 patients admitted in the hospital, 26 were admitted because of COVID-19. Sherwin said the hospital at the beginning of December saw more patients admitted because of COVID-19. However, he said the current influx of patients comes close to that time.

“If the numbers continue to go up the way that they have over the last two weeks, we’ll probably exceed that level because I think we were at a high of 28 before,” Sherwin said.

The hospital was at 56% of bed occupancy on Monday, according to the state health department.

This time around, Sherwin said the patient census is a little higher, and that staff are working overtime and extra shifts to account for the patient volume. He said the hospital isn’t normally staffed for a patient census of 70.

“As this continues and goes on for a longer period of time, the staff start to feel a little bit stressed and they get tired because they’re working more hours than what they normally would be doing,” he said. “But the staff has been positive, they’re being very helpful and engaged to try to take the best care of our community that we can.”

Meanwhile, Northeast Michigan continues to see an increase in the number of COVID-19 infections in area residents.

Last week, 374 new or probable infections were reported by local public health officials and 97 more confirmed or probable infections were reported on Monday.

Of those confirmed or probable cases reported on Monday, 47 were Alpena County residents, 12 were Presque Isle County residents, 19 were Montmorency County residents, and 19 were Alcona County residents.

MidMichigan Health Public Relations Manager Millie Jezior said in an email to The News hospital officials do not know which of the variants patients are being admitted to the hospital with. Jezior said the hospital’s testing lets them know whether a patient is positive for the virus and then the sample is sent to the state for additional testing.

Sherwin estimates about 70% of seniors 65 and older are vaccinated in the region and so the patients being admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 are a little younger than hospital officials have seen before. While older patients are still being admitted, he said the patients they are now seeing are typically unvaccinated.

The Alpena hospital has also managed to keep its supply of personal protective equipment, such as N95 masks, surgical masks, gowns, exam gloves, and eye protection, for more than 30 days. Other MidMichigan Medical Center locations, such as Clare, Gratiot, Midland and Mount Pleasant, have seen their PPE supplies decrease to between 15 and 30 days.

Sherwin said the hospital has that volume of PPE because hospital officials saw this trend coming and ordered more supplies.

“We know what happened last time we got into this situation,” he said. “We got ahead of it and we ordered additional supplies.”