BELLINGHAM, Wash. – PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center is feeling the strain from the current surge of COVID cases.
Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sudhakar Karlapudi says last Sunday, January 9th, they had a record 61 patients being treated for COVID-19.
That’s almost 50% more than they had on any one day during the delta variant surge.
He says they’ve been implementing plans to create space for COVID patients.
“We are expanding to other areas within the hospital to create additional capacity,” said Karlapudi. “One strategy for creating this additional capacity is to significantly limit the number of procedures we do in the hospital.”
He says the hospital’s emergency services are also over 100% capacity at times and wait times have increased.
He’s asking people to only go to the Emergency Room with urgent or life-threatening conditions and to seek testing and other treatments elsewhere.
Whatcom County Health Department Director Erika Lautenbach says hospitalization rates usually lag behind infection rates, so the number of people admitted to the hospital is likely to increase in coming weeks.