The Medical Center at Bowling Green, TriStar Greenview Regional Hospital and Glasgow’s T.J. Samson Community Hospital all reported increases in COVID-19 patients for the third consecutive week.

Med Center Health Executive Vice President Wade Stone told the Daily News the hospital was still at full capacity Friday.

T.J. Regional Health Executive Vice President of Marketing Stacey Biggs said the Glasgow hospital was not at capacity yet but is “bursting at the seams.”

TriStar Greenview Regional Hospital Marketing Manager Michael Ferguson did not provide an exact number of COVID-19 patients the hospital had Friday, but he did say it had seen an increase in such patients the past few weeks similar to what the other hospitals are seeing.

Stone said as of Friday afternoon, The Medical Center had 65 COVID-19 patients. That’s an increase of 15 individuals from last Friday’s tally of 51 such patients.

Of those 65, he said about 80% were unvaccinated. Stone said the hospital had 21 patients in critical care and 14 were on ventilators. About 90% of those in critical care or on ventilators were unvaccinated.

On Thursday, Gov. Andy Beshear announced record numbers of Kentuckians in intensive care, 590, and on ventilators, 345, and a positivity rate of 13.24%. He announced more than 10,000 new COVID-19 cases and more than 90 deaths in the last two days leading to Friday.

Beshear also said three Federal Emergency Management Agency strike teams he requested arrived in Kentucky to assist the commonwealth with COVID-19 cases.

With hospital staff and resources stretched thin, Beshear announced additional help the state has coordinated to assist hospitals, including: securing the FEMA strike teams, deploying the Kentucky National Guard to support COVID-19 response in hospitals and providing COVID-19 testing assistance to some Kentucky hospitals.

“The age of COVID patients has definitely moved down younger as this surge has continued,” Stone said. “We are still holding patients in the emergency department. The state has contacted us and we were offered assistance from the National Guard. We have about 30 National Guard folks who will be assisting Med Center Health starting next week.”

Stone reassured the National Guard would only be present in an assisting role helping out with nonclinical support capacities. He said the staff at the hospital welcomes their support.

A Daily News reporter asked Stone what plans the hospital had in place if the surge keeps escalating, and he insisted they were prepared for the “worst-case scenario.”

They are still moving around surgeries to make room for COVID patients and communicating with other health care entities in the state.

“We understand emergency preparedness,” Stone said. “Our entire staff is familiar with the process. We have made all the preparations necessary to ensure we can still serve the region. We want our community to know they can count on us. We feel very good about the steps our team is taking to prepare for whatever scenarios may come.”

Stone also said 90% of all employees with Med Center Health were either vaccinated or planned to get vaccinated by Sept. 1. He said that number increased from 65% in just a few weeks’ time while 99% of all active physicians were vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Stone said Med Center Health officially passed 90,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine administered to the public.

“I think it’s important for our community to understand the impact on hospitals that the current surge is having,” he added. “The most compelling reason to communicate that is to stress what we can all do to alleviate those constraints, which is to get vaccinated.”

At T.J. Regional Health, Biggs said they had 36 COVID-19 inpatients as of Friday morning. That is an increase from the 22 they were treating Aug. 20.

Of those 36 individuals, four are fully vaccinated. Eleven of them are in the ICU and eight are on ventilators.

“It has been a very busy week,” Biggs said. “Having said that, our surge plan is working well. We continue to update it as the surge continues. The plan is working and we are allocating resources the best that we can.”

She said the hospital did receive additional ventilators last week, which has been a “definite help.”

“We have multiple levels of the surge plan. Different triggers will indicate what level we are at,” she said. “One example is because we have been in this intense surge the past couple of days, we have greatly decreased the number of elective surgeries.”

Biggs said the workload has taken a toil on the staff’s mental, physical and emotional well-being. However, she said they were “resilient” and their level of collaboration has been “amazing.”

She urged the public to be patient with workers due to the longer-than-normal wait times the hospital now has, but people should still come to the ER if they need emergency care.

While Greenview did not provide exact numbers, Ferguson said the “vast majority” of COVID-19 patients being treated are unvaccinated.

On Aug. 20, Ferguson said the hospital had 30 COVID-positive patients. That more than doubled its previously reported number of 12 patients hospitalized with the virus.

“When nearing capacity, we make every effort to expand additional step-down and medical bed areas,” Ferguson said. “Our hospital leaders are continually monitoring the situation closely and continue to plan by assessing resources and support to help meet the needs of our community.”

The latest update from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Human Services on Friday said every county in the state was marked red for having a “critical” COVID-19 incidence rate.

Out of the 10 counties in the Barren River region, only five had a vaccination rate of at least 40% (Warren, Simpson, Logan, Barren and Butler).