Beaufort Co. hospitals report a decline in COVID-19 patients
The number of COVID-19-positive patients at Beaufort Memorial Hospital has dropped since the medical center’s CEO reported a surge of infections in late July.
There were 35 coronavirus patients at the hospital as of Thursday, according to spokesperson Courtney McDermott.
Hospital CEO Russell Baxley previously said there were 45 COVID-19 patients at the facility as of July 29.
“We’re seeing the hospital fill up,” he said at the time.
The hospital had reported only 26 coronavirus patients a week before Baxley’s comments.
McDermott on Thursday also confirmed that the facility’s 12-bed intensive care unit had more space available as of about 4 p.m. Aug. 6 than it did on July 29.
Seven ICU beds were filled on Thursday and five of those people had contracted COVID-19.
On July 29, nine patients were in the ICU. Eight of them had been diagnosed with the disease, Baxley said.
Three COVID-19 patients were on ICU ventilators as of Thursday, McDermott added. There are 34 ventilators at the hospital in total.
Baxley on July 29 said the recent turnover of available hospital beds has been encouraging.
Coronavirus patients have been cycling in and out of the medical center faster than they were at the beginning of the pandemic, he said.
So while the hospital had reported more coronavirus-positive admissions than usual, doctors weren’t running out of space, Baxley said.
Physicians, he added, are now familiar with COVID-19 treatments, including the use of an antiviral medication called remdesivir and plasma.
The Hilton Head Regional Healthcare system, meanwhile, was treating 13 coronavirus patients as of about 4 p.m. Thursday, according to a spokesperson for Tenet Healthcare, which owns Hilton Head and Coastal Carolina hospitals.
That’s also a drop from a week prior, when as of July 29, the system had 16 patients with confirmed coronavirus infections.
The system had three COVID-19 patients in ICU beds on both July 29 and Thursday, said Tenet spokesperson Daisy Burroughs.
Beaufort Memorial Hospital and Hilton Head Regional Healthcare have not requested assistance from the S.C. Emergency Management Division in recent weeks, the spokespeople added.
Other hospitals, however, turned to the state for help in July amid a spike in COVID-19 admissions.
The Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg County asked the S.C. National Guard to erect tents outside its main building to treat COVID-19 patients if new cases outpaced bed capacity. And National Guard medics stepped in to help Grand Strand area medical centers as hospitalizations surged.
The number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized at one time in South Carolina peaked on July 23, with over 1,700 people were admitted, according to S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control data. There have been small decreases in those daily numbers since.
But some county-level hospitalization data has been unavailable since late July as DHEC transitions to a new hospital occupancy tracking system.
As of Friday, DHEC said that more than 1,400 of the state’s 8,480 occupied inpatient beds were filled by patients with confirmed or suspected coronavirus infections. Just over 230 COVID-19 patients were on ventilators.
About 76% of all inpatients beds in South Carolina were in use, DHEC data show.
