Local hospitals react to spike in COVID-19 cases
By ERIC SEIVERLING
eseiverling@yourmvi.com
With a new surge of COVID-19 cases in the area — Thursday’s count of 2,900 new cases marked a daily high point for Pennsylvania — officials are preparing to have hospitals pushed to the brink.
Are hospitals ready for an increase in patients?
“We are running business as usual,” said Dr. Chong Park, president of Allegheny Health Network’s Jefferson Hospital. “We are not being run by COVID. We’re able to handle it without any difficulty at the moment.”
Park said the hospital established a multi-level surge plan when the pandemic hit the state in March. The first stage of the surge plan includes utilizing negative pressure beds, opening and closing additional units as needed, regularly sanitizing rooms and keeping COVID patients in one place.
“We’ve never been to the second level, knock on wood,” Park said. “We did anticipate a fall surge, and this is what this is.”
At Monongahela Valley Hospital, officials are telling a different story.
MVH’s Senior Vice President of Nursing Sherry Watkins said the combination of coronavirus patients with standard emergency patients has caused concern at the hospital.
“We are at capacity,” Watkins said. “We are discharging patients to speed up the process, but our emergency room is pretty busy every day.”
According to Watkins, the surge of patients is a result of people not seeking treatment during the pandemic’s first surge in March.
Watkins said in-patient census numbers range from 120 to 130 patients a day, and the emergency room sees 70 to 100 patients daily.
“Patients were afraid to come to the hospital,” Watkins said. “The patients we are seeing are more sick and require extensive care and require critical care beds. We had a COVID unit open in April, but we do not see the same volume of COVID patients.”
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