Hospital CEOs on handling case surges, health-care employee protection

morning to both of you michael i'll start with you your state tennessee is involved in the pilot program and distribution of vaccines walk us through how your state is working through this sort of logistical rollout thank you for asking so the state is gearing up for the vaccine we are very excited as healthcare providers because we do know that this will be a truly a game changer for all of us particularly the frontline associates so the state is working through the governor's office as well as the tha

tennessee hospital associations working with all the hospitals in the state who will be the first recipients of the vaccine our goal is to make sure that we start off with the front-line associates especially those that are have uh pre-existing conditions and making sure we uh save uh that we are able to get them first and hopefully that will help us as we continue to fight uh this virus dr wheeler the world needs as many vaccines as possible to end this pandemic and until we get there

the positivity rate in your state of minnesota continues to climb i'm just curious perhaps you know even more concerning is the shortage of medical workers you're seeing walk us through what you're seeing on the ground there yeah you're right our geography in the midwest upper midwest has been seeing unprecedented numbers of infections in case growth in minnesota our positivity rate is 15 percent but in surrounding states it's as high as 50 and so we really are concerned

about the case bureaus and we know we're at unprecedented cases in our state right now the hospitalizations are three times what they were in may at the peak and we very much have uh because of of some help from the public had enough time to get the protective equipment the ventilators and the space but you cannot manufacture a talented and compassionate caregiver and that's where we're having trouble with now especially with so many

of them being affected or their families being affected by community spread in our organization and uh in the community so following on that then dr wheeler uh you know if things continue at the pace they are are you not going to have enough health care workers to deal with the influx of patients well we're doing everything possible again most of the healthcare workers are getting or being exposed to this with community spread so one of our key key messages is please help us on the community side

of things the need for masking physical distancing and washing hands all those things that i know people are fatigued but so are the healthcare workers and you can keep our healthcare workers healthier and able to care for you if you do those things so that's one of the big ways in which we can actually keep our workforce healthy to take care because these are incredibly skilled people and you can't replace them shepherd smith here thanks for watching cnbc on youtube