Chicago Hospital Briefly Stopped Accepting Patients When Overwhelmed With Shooting Victims

Chicago’s Mount Sinai Hospital was forced to temporarily go “on bypass” Sunday morning after victims from a series of shootings left their trauma center at full capacity, CNN reports. The term “on bypass” refers to when a hospital can no longer perform ambulance runs, and must divert any new patients to another nearby trauma center. Chicago reportedly has five trauma centers in total. 

According to ABC 7 News in San Francisco, seven people were killed with another 52 people left wounded from shootings across the city of Chicago this past weekend alone. Roberta Rakove, Mount Sinai Hospital’s Senior VP for External Affairs, told Fox News on Monday that the hospital went on bypass from 4:30 a.m., and was off bypass by 6:30 a.m. 

Rakove claims two motor vehicle accidents also accounted for temporarily putting Mount Sinai Hospital, which had 12 trauma patients at its peak, on bypass. While Rakove couldn’t determine how many instances there were when Mount Sinai had to stop accepting patients, there was a weekend last year in which more than 70 people were shot.

“All Level 1 trauma centers were overwhelmed, but we all managed,” Rakove said of the shootings from previous years. “This weekend was not that kind of weekend, but it was enough.” Police Chief Eddie Johnson was equally bothered by the staggering number of victims of gun violence in Chicago, especially in the shadow of incidents in El Paso and Dayton.

“You have to stop yourself and ask what will it take before we get a handle on what’s going on,” Johnson said. “Not only in Chicago, but across the country. From police departments to the court systems to prosecutors to legislators — we have to come together and figure out more common-sense solutions to these problems because clearly too many of our citizens are being shot and killed.”