CarePoint CEO Dr. Achintya Moulick said “I think the media should not send people in a frenzy” over the latest COVID-19 surge since hospitalizations and deaths remain relatively low at this time.
“The EDs (emergency departments) have seen a significant 30 to 40 percent increase in volume, but their mostly outpatients, what we are running out of is testing kits,” he said at the reopening of Christ Hospital’s Interventional Lab with a new biplane machine.
” … However, the admissions are pretty flat, so you don’t have very sick people coming in, very few deaths: I think the media should not send people in a frenzy … inpatient will not be as bad as what we thought.”
Moulick continued that in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area, 8,000 hospital beds will be necessary on the higher end, while statistical analysis shows 5,000 beds being needed in the best case scenario – both of which he says are “manageable” scenarios.
According to The Statesman Journal, Christ Hospital had a seven-day average bed occupancy calculated on December 10th showed 122 adult inpatient beds in use, just over 87 percent, and 13.6 out of 18 ICU beds in use – or 756 percent.
Meanwhile, the Jersey City COVID-19 dashboard shows there were 296 COVID-19 cases confirmed yesterday with a seven-day average of 182 cases.
The dashboard also shows that on December 19th, Christ Hospital had 115 total patients in the the hospital and just 13 were being treated for COVID-19, or 11.3 percent. On this same day, only eight out of 35 available ventilators were in use.
There was no data indicating how many patients were being treated at the ICU.
As for testing efforts, President Joe Biden (D) announced plans to distribute 500 million free at-home rapid testing nationwide and dispatch military members to overburdened hospital, as ABC reported.
