OREGON—fastest growing number of cases on the West Coast.
Personal note: Quite frankly, I’m trying reeeeaallly hard not to be terrified. Oregon’s governor was so proactive from the beginning, but mandates only work if people cooperate. At first they did, but now it’s “eat, drink and be merry” in small groups that lead to community spread. And sue the governor over restrictions.
My southern Oregon county (Jackson) is leading the pack in our area, just behind the more populated counties surrounding Portland up north. We are so careful, and I honestly don’t know what more my husband and I can do to protect ourselves.
With the fastest-growing number of COVID-19 cases on the West Coast, Oregon hospitals are preparing to deal with a surge in patients.
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But as of Monday, there were 318 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, part of a pattern in which the number of new cases reported daily continues to climb.
“The trend is clear and very concerning,” said Dana Hargunani, the chief medical officer for the Oregon Health Authority.
While a case surge could be worse this time around, the state has had more time to prepare. Oregon’s warehouse is stocked with PPE — personal protective equipment: over 10 million surgical masks, nearly 4 million gowns and N95-masks and over 7 million gloves. New shipments of PPE are coming in every day: 5 million gloves arrived over the weekend.
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And hospitals have had time to prepare, too. They’ve set up surge tents and additional beds in anticipation of a patient influx.
“We now have multiple plans and systems in place,” Hargunani said. “We’re better prepared than we were in February.”
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But space isn’t what’s limiting his hospital’s capacity: it’s people.
“Staffing is really an issue as we bounce up against our capacity constraints,” Absalon said.
“We will have to reduce elective surgeries,” Absalon said. Many of those surgeries were rescheduled when elective procedures were paused across the state earlier this year.
Dr. Jamie Greboski is the chief medical officer at Asante, which runs four hospitals in Southern Oregon. Asante is a regional resource hospital in a part of Oregon that last week saw new diagnosed cases rise by 162%.That’s meant more hospitalizations, too. “Over the last few days, we’ve had a threefold increase in the number of patients,” Greboski said. He doesn’t see that slowing any time soon.
“We set up, regionally, a COVID hotline,” Greboski said. It can help people who think they have COVID figure out if they need to seek further care or go to a hospital.The line was flooded. “I heard today that we had 100 calls an hour in the first two hours of the day,” said Greboski.
There are patients at some of Asante’s hospitals that could be discharged to a different medical center to recover. That’s a common practice for patients recovering from a severe illness. But Greboski says the places they normally send patients - like memory care facilities, nursing homes, and skilled nursing facilities - either don’t have room, are already battling COVID-19 infections, or can’t accept any patients with COVID-19."At Medford Rogue (Regional Medical Center) we have 15 people waiting for a placement. In Grants Pass, ten people are waiting for a placement," Greboski said. That’s 25 fewer available beds available in the region until those patients can be moved.
Oregon currently still has enough nurses available statewide to care for COVID-19 patients and staff ICUs as they fill up, according to the Oregon Nurses Association.
“We still have enough nurses now,” said Kevin Mealy, a spokesperson for the union. “The number of beds is less important than the number of people able to staff them… there are interventions you can take to create more spaces, but creating people with the competency and training to care for patients is the much more important effort.”
Mealy said he’s most concerned about how rural hospitals will manage as the number of cases in Oregon hits a new peak.
“In areas of Oregon where there’s only one hospital for miles and miles and they begin with fewer ICU beds, it does not take a large outbreak to fill that capacity,” he said.
Gov. Brown pleads with Oregonians to stay home as COVID-19 strains hospital capacity