Area hospitals monitoring COVID-19 Hospitalizations

COLUMBUS, Ga. (WTVM) - COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are back on the radars of hospitals in our area. While officials say cases are not as severe, the numbers in some places in our area aren’t exactly normal.

At Piedmont Columbus regional, they have a wing full of COVID patients. When you hear that, it may sound alarming, but they say it’s nothing to raise any red flags for now.

Piedmont Columbus Regional employees are keeping an eye on COVID-19 hospitalization numbers. So are those at the East Alabama Medical Center, where at the start of the month, the hospital had 21 patients with the virus. that number now sits at 11.

“Even though the number was higher than it’s been this calendar year, the severity of the cases has not been bad at all.”, said John Atkinson, P.R. & Marketing Director for East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika.

Both hospitals are not sounding any alarms just yet but say it’s important to be cautious, especially heading into this year’s flu season. Piedmont reports they are treating roughly 15 patients with COVID or COVID related illnesses in Columbus. According to Chief Nursing Officer for the hospital, Carry Burcham, that may sound like a lot but it’s not compared to where we were a few years ago.

“The levels are very manageable and nothing alarming in any of the piedmont hospitals.”, said Burcham. “We don’t even have a COVID unit open right now. We used to have a dedicated COVID unit to manage the volume that we had, and the acuity we had and we stopped doing that sometime back and that’s now a normal medical surgical floor.” said Burcham.

The CDC reports Alabama and Georgia as both having low hospital admission rates for COVID in the last few weeks. Counties in our area with medium rates of coronavirus hospitalizations are only Barbour county in Alabama and Quitman county in Georgia.

“We just remind people again to if they’re sick with COVID or flu like symptoms to stay home and rest and don’t pass it on to someone else. That’s the best way to prevent any of this from becoming a problem later in the season.” said Atkinson.

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