Alabama Mayor Says ICU Beds Are Scarce as State's Cases Rise
KING: In Alabama, the mayor of Montgomery sounding the alarm, saying the city's hospitals is now running out of ICU beds and saying sick patients now being forced to travel more than an hour away to get treatment. CNN's Victor Blackwell joins us live from Montgomery. Victor, short-term crisis or longer-term big problem?</s>VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: The mayor at this point does not know. What he knows is that the numbers at this moment are going in all the wrong directions here across Montgomery County. Let's go through them. The number of COVID-confirmed cases going up. Up 45 percent in the first week of May, up 46 percent in the second week of May, up a double-digit percentage in the third week. The number of COVID hospitalizations going up at three Baptist Health hospitals across central Alabama. And each of those facilities for three weeks, the number of available ICU beds going down. I'm in front of Jackson Hospital here in Montgomery. They had just one bed available when I arrived here yesterday, and now all 30 beds of the ICU critical care beds are occupied. The mayor says there's a direct connection between the numbers and the loosening of restrictions across Alabama. The shelter-in-place order was allowed to expire at the end of April. The retail and restaurants and bars and salons and fitness centers all allowed to reopen with some rules. And now as we go into Memorial Day weekend, there's the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases up at UAB who is really, really concerned. Watch.</s>DR. JEANNE MARRAZZO, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES, SCHOOL OF MEDICINE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA, BIRMINGHAM: I'm quite worried with the Memorial Day weekend coming and the restrictions loosening that this is going to go like a prairie fire. It's been smoldering. We've had a lid on it. But now it really has the potential to get out of control.</s>BLACKWELL: What some hope, what most hope, actually, will not be any kindling added to that fire. The governor, Kay Ivey, has announced she will amend her order to allow schools, public, private, K-12, the technical schools, colleges and universities to reopen next Monday. That's June 1st. The mayor here so concerned that he's considering his own shelter-in- place order -- John?</s>KING: Victor Blackwell on the ground. One of the places we need to watch very, very closely as this unfolds not only this week but going forward. Victor, appreciate the live reporting in Montgomery, Alabama. When we come back, a strong message from Baltimore's mayor to President Trump: Don't visit on Memorial Day. The mayor joins us in just a moment.