WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — The number of COVID-19 inpatients Houston Healthcare has seen a big drop over the last month. Doctors say they want to keep it that way.
The challenge now is maintenance. Six weeks ago, it was a much different fight.
"During our peak activity with COVID, our ICU was pretty much completely filled with COVID patients, and then we had overflow on the floors as well," said Dr. Dan Stewart, the hospital system's Chief Medical Officer.
Stewart says anxiety was high.
"There was a natural angst on everybody's part about this illness that really we didn't know a whole lot about," he said, but eventually, things changed.
According to data reported by the hospital, COVID inpatient levels plummeted in May and are now so low that the hospital won't release an exact tally for fear of identifying individual patients.
Instead, now it only says it's got fewer than 5 patients hospitalized.
It's been that way for nearly three weeks now.
"Great news for everybody," said Stewart.
He says limitations on businesses imposed by the state and repeated warnings about the virus from health leaders helped bring the number down.
"Governor Kemp and everybody in the state, in terms of some of the restrictions that were done (helped), and I think that, you know, the population that was at risk, which is my population, 65 and above, took it to heart," said the doctor.
Statewide, new hospitalizations have followed a similar pattern, dropping from a peak of about 180 per day on average in mid-April to roughly 80 per day now.
The doctor also said if a "second wave" does arrive in the fall, medical professionals will be much more prepared to handle it after their experiences dealing with the first wave and adapting treatment protocols along the way, but Stewart still warns it's not yet time to let down your guard.
"I don't want anybody listening to this to get the idea, 'Oh, we're over with this, we can just go back,'" he said. "We still need to do everything we've been doing. We need to social distance, we need to still wear masks when we're out in public, we need to wash our hands very well, we need to wipe things down."
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