President Biden Deploying Military To MI Due To COVID-19 Surge

MICHIGAN — President Joe Biden plans Thursday to announce the federal government will send additional medical teams to six states, including Michigan, to help hospitals battle the latest COVID-19 surge, according to multiple reports.

Starting next week, 1,000 military medical personnel will arrive to help mitigate staffing crunches at hospitals across the country. Many facilities are struggling because their workers are in at-home quarantine or isolation due to the virus amid a nationwide spike in COVID-19 cases. The new deployments will be in addition to other federal medical personnel who were previously sent to states to help with acute shortages.

The majority of the deployed military personnel will be trained doctors and nurses, according to the Washington Post. Biden is expected to announce the plan during a news conference Thursday.

About 29 percent of hospitals in Michigan reported staffing issues, including Beaumont Health, which said it's at a "breaking point" amid the state's fourth COVID-19 surge.

State health officials recently reported record COVID-19 daily averages and hospitalizations in the state, as it battles this latest surge, which is mainly driven by the omicron variant.

They also warned the omicron variant's peak won't occur until late January or early February, in which the state could see 8,000 people hospitalized with COVID-19.

Chief Medical Executive Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian said during a Tuesday news conference that models project a very "sharp and fast peak."

"When we look at our new cases, our weekly cases per 100,000, we're now at a point that we have not seen through this pandemic," Bagdasarian said. "This is the highest number of weekly cases we've ever had."

The White House said the teams will support Henry Ford Hospital just outside Detroit, University Hospital in New Jersey, the University of New Mexico hospital in Albuquerque, Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, Cleveland Clinic and Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.

Reporting from the Associated Press was used in this article.