Two years with COVID-19: Central Indiana health officials, doctors reflect on highs and lows – FOX 59 Indianapolis

Friday, March 11 marks two years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.

It was very, very intense and very stressful, but also a lot of team building through adversity, said Dr. Amy Beth Kressel, Medical Director of Infection Prevention and Antimicrobial Stewardship at Eskenazi Health.

We would do one thing and then literally the same day we would have to change something because everything was changing so quickly. The hospital and my colleagues and I really came together.

A lot has changed in Central Indiana since WHOs declaration just about every COVID-19 metric continues to fall.

At Eskenazi Health, Dr. Kressel said frontline workers were caring for two COVID-19 inpatients as of Friday morning. That is compared to somewhere between 130 or 140 COVID-19 inpatients at the height of the Omicron surge.

We were able to take care of our patients through a lot of teamwork and a lot of grace for each other, said Dr. Kressel. So thats the positive.

On the flip side, Dr. Kressel said there is one lesson she hopes is learned: the nations supply chain is broken and needs to be fixed.

Supply chains basically broke, said Dr. Kressel. Personal protective equipment, we have shortages of critical medicines, we were concerned about our ventilators Its not as critical now but the supply chain issues are not completely resolved.

Dr. Kressel said she hopes there will be genuine action to make hospitals and the health care system more resilient to a future pandemic or any sort of future crisis.

I really think resiliency is going to have to be baked in across all the systems, said Dr. Kressel.

Meanwhile in Monroe County, health officials agree the pandemic caught many sectors by surprise.

We didnt have resources in place and infrastructure in place for a lot of things that we have now, said Penny Caudill, Health Administrator for the Monroe County Health Department. It can be an eye opening experience Why didnt we have those things? Well, we didnt have the infrastructure. We didnt pay for the infrastructure. But we can do that going forward and certainly more money is being put into public health. I guess that thats a good thing to come from this.

Caudill said another positive to come out of the pandemic is more open lines of communication and better relationships.

Weve had good relationships with our community partners, with the hospital and the university, but certainly the pandemic has forged new ones, said Caudill.

Friday also marked the last weekly scheduled COVID-19 press conference for the city of Bloomington. Caudill said the county now has the tools and ability to quickly orchestrate another meeting if necessary.

My staff has been incredible the past couple years. Incredible, said Stephenie Mellinger, Administrator for the Madison County Health Department. They may not interact on a daily basis, but they did during this pandemic and so it was really great to see how the whole department came together.

Mellinger said she has done a lot of reflection in this past week leading up to the two-year milestone. While she does remember this day in history, she said she remembers another day more vividly.

I remember more clearly the first case we had in our county, which would have been two years next week, said Mellinger. It was March 17th and I remember not being surprised by it. It was just a matter of time. I mean, we were watching all of this unfold.

Now, eyes are set on the future of public health in Madison County. Mellinger said the pandemic led to the county getting its first-ever mobile unit.

That was a goal of mine and it happened sooner as a result, said Mellinger. I want it to be a health clinic on wheels.

For a little less than a year, the mobile unit has been making its way across Madison County providing a variety of services outside of COVID-19. It now operates four days a week.

We have plans bigger, better, greater plans for that mobile unit and I want to run the wheels off of it, said Mellinger. Definitely, there have been some good things that have come out of [the pandemic].

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Two years with COVID-19: Central Indiana health officials, doctors reflect on highs and lows - FOX 59 Indianapolis