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Mesa County has no beds available in hospital intensive care units as area medical facilities fill with patients amid the surge in coronavirus hospitalizations in Colorado, local officials said Thursday. of public health.
Mesa County public health officials said local hospitals are also approaching capacity in terms of overall beds and staff, due to widespread community transmission of COVID-19. County hospitals ran out of intensive care beds on Wednesday, according to a press release.
“We have hospital beds available and we have contingency plans in place that will allow us to increase our capacity and ensure safe, quality care for as many patients as needed,” said Bryan Johnson , president of St. Mary’s Medical Center in Grand Junction, in a report.
The announcement that Mesa County hospitals are filling up comes nearly a week after Governor Jared Polis asked Colorado health systems to submit plans on how they plan to increase capacity in anticipation of the possibility of hospitals being overwhelmed.
Mesa County has recorded more than 2,000 new cases of the coronavirus in the past two weeks, and it is estimated that one in 130 people in the county has the COVID-19 disease, according to the press release.
Statewide, a record 1,500 people were hospitalized on Thursday with confirmed COVID-19. The percentage of intensive care unit beds used across Colorado also tied a new record, with 86% filled on Thursday.
Hospital capacity is fluid and can change from day to day depending on supplies, the number of patients – with and without COVID-19 – and the staff available to treat them.
“There are times when we have more patients in hospitals than beds,” said Dr Sandeep Vijan, chief medical officer at Parkview Medical Center in Pueblo, adding that the facility holds patients in the emergency room before releasing them. move in such scenarios.
Parkview transferred 10 patients to UCHealth system facilities in Colorado Springs and Denver. But, Vijan said, the hospital did not exceed 100% capacity on Monday, as Polis announced at a press conference this week.
Parkview has approximately 220 medical and surgical beds and 42 intensive care beds. Almost 50% are filled by patients with COVID-19, Vijan said.
One of the biggest issues that hospitals face is staffing. Health systems have reported that more employees are falling ill with COVID-19 due to the extent of the disease in the state.
Richard Salgueiro, executive director of the VA Western Colorado Health Care System, encouraged retired or displaced healthcare workers to step in if possible.
“It is a call to arms,” he said in a statement.
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