Hospitals prepare to respond to COVID-19 cases
MONTEREY, Calif. (KION) A major Monterey County hospitals have medical tents up and ready to assess patients with respiratory symptoms, which could indicate a possible coronavirus case. If the outbreak gets worse, they are prepared to dedicate more areas of their facilities to coronavirus patients.
Hospital staff wore masks, gloves and protective gear Tuesday as they checked in patients to the Emergency Department at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. It’s just one of several local hospitals that have set up medical tents in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
“We’ve been more careful to separate people who arrive at the emergency department as soon as they step up to determine whether to not they have signs or symptoms,” CHOMP Medical Director Infection Prevention Dr. Martha Blum said.
As patients arrive to the ED during the coronavirus outbreak, they’ll go one of two ways: those experiencing respiratory symptoms like cough and fever will head over to the tents for further evaluation. Others will be let into the emergency room.
There are nearly 900 licensed hospital beds for patients at major Central Coast hospitals: 240 at CHOMP in monterey, 263 at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, 172 at Natividad in Salinas and 222 at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz.
But if the pandemic gets worse, hospitals have plans to deal with a surge of positive cases.
“If we start getting a large number of them then, yes, we have plans to section off part of the building so that it would be dedicated to the care of just patients with COVID-19,” Dr. Blum said.
But with the outbreak comes challenges–some hospitals are having a hard time getting N-95 masks and pump hand sanitizer.
“We do have adequate supplies right now; however, the supplies are not coming in as much as we would like, but we are prepared. We have a pandemic supply available and we are prepared to dig into that if needed," CHOMP Spokesperson Monica Sciuto said.
In addition to Community Hospital, Natividad and Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital have the medical tents up and ready.
Only people who meet specific symptom or exposure criteria can be tested for the virus.
Some health care systems, like Montage Health, are now offering a free online visit, or eVisit, for people who have respiratory symptoms. You can go to evisit.montagehealth.org or chomp.org to access the free visit.
