COVID-19-related hospitalizations seem to be leveling off in the county after a post-holiday increase.
“I would say overall we’re seeing a significant decline,” said Grays Harbor Community Hospital spokesman Chris Majors. “I think the spike after the holidays has leveled off to the point we’re only seeing one or two hospitalized COVID patients on a regular basis.”
That’s a snapshot from Tuesday. The numbers fluctuate, said Majors, “but those numbers have come down from the 11 or 14 we had at one point in time.”
He said that 11-14 number may not sound high, but because COVID hospitalization “is such an intensive process it can become overwhelming pretty quickly,” said Majors. According to the CDC, hospitalized COVID-19 patients spend between 10 and 13 days in the hospital.
At this point in time, “We are definitely not overflowing with people. We have space,” said Majors. “Right now we have plenty of beds set up and ready to go if necessary.”
Bed availability is variable at the hospital, because it’s based on staffing on any given day, said Majors. While the hospital does have the beds available currently, staffing levels have a big impact on how many patients the hospital can handle.
Summit Pacific Medical Center in Elma is also currently treating COVID-19 patients and has not seen a surge in patients recently.
“We continue to treat COVID-19 patients on our inpatient unit but have not seen a surge in these patients in the previous weeks,” said Summit Pacific spokeswoman Nichole Pas. “We have been caring for one to two COVID patients at a time.”
Like Grays Harbor Community Hospital, Summit Pacific has available beds.
“Bed availability at our facility is not a concern at this time,” said Pas. “We have been at 50% bed capacity lately. Our hospitalizations have been trending at a steady, but manageable pace.”
According to the state Department of Health, the number of total hospitalizations in Grays Harbor County for the duration of the pandemic grew from 118 Jan. 10, 2020, to 149 as of Feb. 7. The number of new hospitalizations reported during that time frame was 31.
