Several hospitals in Maine report record number of COVID-19 hospital patients

Medical centers in eastern and central Maine and York County all set records for COVID-19 hospitalizations this week as the number of people admitted with the disease continues to rise.

The number of confirmed COVID-19 hospital patients statewide hit a new high of 119 on Friday, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, up from 90 a week ago. Fifty-one of those patients were in intensive care, up from 49 a week ago.

The Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor continues to bear the heaviest burden of any hospital in the state with an average of 22.2 COVID-19 confirmed hospital patients treated each day for the six days ending Wednesday, against 14.3 during the previous period. That figure established a high pandemic for the hospital – which reported 27 hospitalized COVID-19 patients on Wednesday – for the third week in a row. EMMC, the hub where critically ill patients in northern and eastern Maine are often sent, had spent the entire month of September without admitting a single such patient and only had a handful in August and in the first half of October.

MaineGeneral again broke its record for COVID-19 hospital patients for the third week in a row with an average of 13.1 treated each day for the week ending Thursday, up slightly from 12.1 the previous week and 9 , 9 the previous week. During the summer months, there were many weeks in which Augusta hospital had no coronavirus hospitalized.

After remaining relatively calm, York County’s largest hospital saw a surge in the number of COVID-19 hospital patients towards the end of the week. The South Maine Healthcare Medical Center in Biddeford had 5 such patients a week ago, but 20 on Thursday, a quadruple in a single week. The daily average of 11.4 hospitalized coronavirus patients far exceeded the hospital’s worst in mid-April, when the figure was 7.6 per day.

The county’s other hospital, York Hospital, broke its record for the second week, with an average of 5.3 COVID-19 inpatients each day, up from 4.1 the week before and 1.4 the previous period .

Lewiston hospitals have also seen new heights. The central Maine medical center had an average of 9.3 patients hospitalized for COVID-19 each day, up from 6.6 the previous week; until November 13, there had never been more than 5 of these patients treated on the same day. The city’s other hospital, St. Mary’s, also had its busiest week with an average of 4.4 hospitalized coronavirus patients per day, up slightly from 4.3 in the previous period.

The Maine Medical Center in Portland saw the number of COVID-19 hospital patients drop from an average of 9.4 last week to 14 for the week ending Thursday. Unlike its more distant counterparts on Interstate 95, Maine Med’s burden remains well below peak levels during the spring surge, as it treated more than 30 COVID-19 hospital patients.

Over the past two weeks, hospital officials said they would be able to meet growing demand by relocating staff and elective surgery beds as needed. But they expressed concerns over the exposure of their own staff off the ward, which would create ripple effects in a state that was in short supply of nurses and respiratory technicians even before the pandemic hit.

Northern Light COVID-19 Incident Commander Dr James Jarvis said on Wednesday that in early spring, EMMC had prepared contingency plans to treat 100 patients and that coordination with other hospitals and networks of hospitals was excellent. The hospital network was seeking to resist the new wave without having to cut back on care for both acute and chronic patients, he said, and urged Mainers to follow public health guidelines to slow the spread of the disease: wear masks, washing hands, maintaining social distancing. and avoid holiday gatherings.

“What we don’t want to do is go back to those days when we couldn’t take care of people with acute and chronic needs,” Jarvis said.

Jarvis was unsure why northern and eastern Maine experienced the fall wave earlier and more violently than southern Maine – which suffered most of the spring wave – but conditions weather could play a role. The coronavirus appears to spread faster in cold, dry air, allowing expired droplets to travel further. “Partly, maybe it’s that northern Maine is cooling a lot sooner,” he says.

Northern Light Health – EMMC’s parent entity – reported on Wednesday that one of its staff had died of the illness after being exposed while off duty. The network declined to say where the person worked, out of respect for the family’s privacy.

For those severely affected by the disease, hospitalizations typically follow the initial exposure to the disease by one to three weeks, so the trend could worsen given the rapid and continuing rise in newly diagnosed cases. Over the past three weeks, Maine has repeatedly broken its daily record for new COVID-19 cases, suggesting the hospitalization spike will continue to grow.

Portland’s Mercy Hospital had an average of 4 patients per day for the six days ending Wednesday, up from 3 in the previous period. Brunswick’s Mid Coast Hospital was averaging 3.1 per day for the week ending Thursday, up from 1.9 per day this week but below 3.6 the week before.

In the spring and summer, it was common for one or two smaller hospitals in Maine to report having one or two patients hospitalized with a pandemic for a few days, then going weeks or even months without one. But for more than a month, many of these small hospitals have been seeing patients at the same time. In the week ending Thursday, these included Franklin Memorial in Farmington, Sebasticook Valley in Pittsfield, PenBay Medical Center in Rockport, Inland Hospital in Waterville, Blue Hill Hospital, AR Gould in Presque Isle, Maine Coast Hospital in Ellsworth and Mayo Regional in Dover. -Foxcroft.

Hospitalizations are a delayed indicator in that they usually occur one to three weeks after a person is exposed to the disease, but unlike other metrics, it does not depend on who and how many people have been tested. They can end in three ways: recovery, death or transfer to another institution.

The Press Herald’s investigation covers the seven days ending Thursday, with the exception of members of Northern Light Health, which was unable to report Thursday’s data due to the holidays. The journal compiles data from hospitals and hospital networks. The data does not include ambulatory or hospitalized patients suspected of having the virus but who have never been tested. It includes most of the state’s hospitals and accounts for the vast majority of statewide hospitalizations reported weekly by the Maine CDC.

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