One of the five trauma clinics in the Chicago area had to reportedly put themselves "on bypass." That's Mount Sinai Hospital's way of saying that they weren't accepting any more patients, and ambulances needed to take the injured somewhere else for the time being. According to the center's Senior Vice President for External Affairs, Roberta Rakove, the overwhelming amount of shooting victims had the hospital backed up and they just couldn't help any more people.
By Sunday morning there were 12 trauma patients being cared for at Mount Sinai, and according to FOX 5 News, Chicago Police Public Information Officer Anthony Guglielmi told CNN that there were issues with gang disputes on the west side of the city. Over the weekend in total, there were reportedly 37 people shot and four people killed.
Police Chief Eddie Johnson referenced the two recent tragedies in Ohio and Texas when he said, "You have to stop yourself and ask what will it take before we get a handle on what’s going on, 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.”
Rakove says that Mount Sinai is back to accepting emergency patients, but she admitted that this wasn't the busiest they've been. The hospital went on bypass sometime last year after there were 70 shooting victims in one weekend. “All Level 1 trauma centers were overwhelmed, but we all managed,” Rakove said. “This weekend was not that kind of weekend, but it was enough.”
