Local hospitals cope with rise in COVID-19 casesDate: 1/11/2022 SPRINGFIELD – The current surge of the COVID-19 pandemic has case numbers at unheard of levels, and though the omicron variant is considered to be a less severe version of the virus, the sheer number of infected have put many local hospitals past capacity.
Officials from Baystate Health, Cooley Dickinson Hospital and Mercy Hospital have said that the level of COVID-19 spread in recent weeks has shown up in their facilities in a big way, and in most cases it is expected to get worse before it gets better.
In December, Baystate Health President and CEO Dr. Mark Keroack said that Baystate Health had 1,095 patients in a system with 988 registered beds; 130 of those patients were admitted with COVID-19. As of the afternoon of Jan. 6 that number had more than doubled to 275 COVID-19 patients, with 221 in Baystate Medical Center, 13 in Baystate Franklin Medical Center, 26 in Baystate Wing Hospital and 15 in Baystate Noble Hospital.
Baystate Health’s Chief of Emergency Medicine Dr. Sundeep Shukla said that Baystate Health finds itself 20 percent over the total capacity across the board. Combined with a 14 percent drop in staffing level, he said that the situation has been very overwhelming for the doctors and nurses working in these hospitals.
He said that one issue, which is not unique to Baystate Health, is that many people are coming to the emergency room for the sole purpose of getting a COVID-19 test, largely because of shortages of tests overall due to high demand.
“The issue that is happening is that some people coming in for COVID-19 swabs are taking away from services we offer people who are really sick,” said Shukla.
Due to the slowdown in elective medical procedures across the state, Shukla said that medical staff have been able to be moved around more freely to mitigate staffing shortages.
As the pandemic enters its third year, medical centers are still trying new strategies to foster better medical outcomes for COVID-19 patients. Shukla said that they have looked back to how things were done in the very beginning of the pandemic in 2020 and have made changes with how they do things over time.
Recently at Baystate Noble Hospital, the waiting room was split into two sections: one for those who have COVID-19 symptoms, and one for those who do not.
The current Baystate Health policy is to allow one visitor at a time per patient. At the very beginning of the pandemic, and for some time into 2020, visitors were not allowed at all in hospitals because of the fear of further spread of the virus. Shukla said he hopes that at least one visitor continues to be allowed for each patient, as they have found that patients often have better outcomes when they have visitors to their room.
Keroack had touched on the idea of rationing care in December. At the time, he said that there was no immediate risk of a need to ration medical care, but that some treatments for more severe COVID-19 infections were at risk. Shukla said that rationing care still has not taken place. He said that when he is working on the hospital floor, he has not had an issue with obtaining any supplies or materials he has needed to treat a patient thus far.
Dr. Syed Hussain, the chief clinical officer for Trinity Health of New England, gave a media address during the last week of December to talk about the ongoing surge and its effect on their hospitals, which includes Mercy Medical Center in Springfield. Hussain said then that he thought that the peak of this surge is still “several weeks away,” and that they are seeing more positive COVID-19 cases in Trinity Hospitals than they saw during the entire pandemic.
“We have difficult times still ahead of us,” said Hussain.
Though he did not give a specific number, Hussain said that Trinity Health still has the capacity to care for both COVID-19 patients and non-COVID-19 patients. He said they had developed a surge plan near the beginning of the pandemic which they have – thus far – not needed to use, but will allow them to care for more patients if the current surge continues or worsens.
Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton saw a slight reduction in the number of COVID-19 patients over the course of several days last week, but still hovers above the record number of patients they had during last year’s winter surge. On Jan. 4, Cooley Dickinson Hospital had 25 COVID-19 patients, the highest number they’ve had in the entire pandemic. In the following two days, however, that number dropped to 20, which still represents a significant elevation in cases since the holidays.
Cooley Dickinson Hospital spokesperson Christina Trinchero said that they can continue managing their COVID-19 patients with “all of their available resources.” She said that they have used a similar strategy to Baystate Health in which the lower number of elective medical procedures allows them to move medical personnel around, mitigating any possible staffing shortfalls.
As the omicron variants spreads at rates unseen through the entire pandemic thus far, the advice from healthcare professionals at each hospital has been the same: wear a mask, socially distance when possible and get the vaccine and booster shot.
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