quote:
That's true because it's always true. There's no reason to say it in a covid press conference because that's been the case for every day that ends in Y for decades.

I meant I have no idea if it's true that acute patients are being diverted to Birmingham because the Montgomery hospitals don't have the beds/staff/resources to treat them. My understanding of the normal diversion cases is that they are primarily emergency/trauma cases that Montgomery hospitals don't have the capability to treat.

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Posted by paperwasp

11x HRV tRant Poster of the Week

Member since Sep 2014

23236 posts

Posted on 5/21/20 at 8:51 am to The Spleen

quote:
“I would say we're still in a bit of a holding pattern with some slight increases in the case count in Alabama,” said Dr. Jodie Dionne-Odom, an infectious disease doctor and researcher at UAB.

“We had been at 200 to 250 new cases a day and now we're closer to 300 to 350 new cases a day,” she said. “So we're watching that very closely, I would say we are concerned about the trend.”

Dr. Mark Wilson, Jefferson County Health Officer, said the numbers in Alabama’s most populous county are likewise ticking up, although without the exponential growth that could jeopardize the health care system.

The more people who are tested for a disease, the more positive results will be found. But experts say expanded testing doesn’t account for all of the increases seen in the state.

“I'm not sure that [testing] is enough to explain all of the increase, at least in Birmingham,” Dionne-Odom said. “A lot of the testing sites that we have had open have consistently been open for a number of weeks now. So we're not at the stage anymore, where we're doubling the amount of testing capacity every day. It's a little more steady.”

“We are not seeing cases going down,” Wilson said. “We're not seeing hospitalizations going down. We've seen a slight increase over the last couple of weeks in cases and hospitalizations, but nothing dramatic.”

Wilson said that roughly 40 percent of the new cases added in Jefferson County over the last few weeks have been associated with spread in nursing homes, either in residents or employees.

“So the bad news is, we've got a problem in our nursing homes,” Wilson said. “This is not unique to us. This is all around the state, and all around the country.

“The good news could be that when you subtract out the nursing homes, that's less cases that are in the general population.”

“Nothing's really changed in terms of the risk,” Wilson said. “The virus is still circulating in the community. You don't know who has it or doesn't. Asymptomatic people can be spreading it.

“Nobody should let up their guard, in terms of taking precautions.”