Upstate hospital leaders plead with community amidst COVID-19 surge – WYFF4 Greenville

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upstate hospital leaders plead with the community to take immediate steps as covert. 19 surges. Leaders of all five upstate hospital systems are calling on the community to take immediate measures to assist them in combating the cove it 19 surge that’s underway. The official expressed deep concern with the growing number of cove it 19 infections after Thanksgiving, especially because the next holiday is upon us unless the community takes immediate steps to stop the spread and even higher surge is expected following this holiday season, according to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. DEAC COVERT 19 infections in the upstate are skyrocketing and continue to outpace all other South Carolina religions. Statewide. Covert 19 new infections have toppled more than 1000 for the 34th consecutive day, growing to more than 2500 new infections each day for the last three days, according to Detik. I’m now going to put up a chart and you know, I don’t think it’s gonna let me put up the chart. I can apply to put it up in the chat, Um, because I’m recording and I’m recording for all of those reporters who cannot, um beyond the call right now, so because I’m recording, it will not let me minimize my screen. So I will try to get that put up in the chat or get one of my other team members a Sandy D’s, maybe to put in the chat so that we could have it up. So with that, I will go with the M ed Health chief medical officer, which is Dr Robert Robert Mock. Let me find Dr Mark. Um, right here and I will spotlight his video, and then we will unm medium. Good afternoon. Uh, as you all know, where about 10 months into this public health crisis, Uh, which is the worst in our lifetime on we recognize. This has been incredibly hard on everyone, uh, trying to manage all the precautions that have been encouraged since the beginning. But we would ask that you continue to try and, uh, take great precautions over the upcoming holidays. Uh, while we recognize the difficulty is you’re trying to gather with your family, we all have a responsibility to try to do our part to decrease spread, uh, to our family, to our friends and our into our neighbors. So askew look at gathering over the holidays for for meals and other things. Please try to keep your your numbers small. Avoid large gatherings if it all possible, uh, try to do outdoor things when the weather permits, uh, adequate social distancing wearing mask, all all the precautions that we have really encouraged from beginning We We’ve noticed an increased number of cases since the Thanksgiving holidays, where many of these were social gatherings for families on bond are hospitalizations have increased his result of that. So we just ask that you all, uh, make a good faith effort to try and do the best we can to decrease the number of cases across the upstate is is Tammy said the number of cases has been skyrocketing across the country, and especially true here in the upstate. So thank you for making that effort. Thank you. With that, we will go with the bonds. Of course. ST. Francis Greenville. Um, Chief clinical officer Dr Marcus Blackstone. Let me go to him, Dr. Blackstone. Thank you, Tammy. You know, I go back to conversations we’ve had this summer and fall about bed capacity, and, you know, we’re at that point where our hospitals were full. Our beds are full, you know, we’re turning over beds as soon as we could get a bed empty. There’s already people waiting on it. We’re holding people waiting on beds. So today I would really encourage you to really take the responsibility. Is Dr Marks that, uh, you know, staying out of big groups, doing the things we’ve all talked about, and you’ll hear my colleagues talk about, you know, after I get done. But you it really is straining our capacity to be able to provide the care to patients that we need to provide covert and non cove. It, you know, there’s not only affects our community, but it also effects, You know, our staff who obviously live in our community. And even if we can make available extra beds in our hospitals, it doesn’t always mean that, you know, we can stop those beds if we have employees that air out because of Kobe. So I would ask you today, unfortunately being, you know, a Greenville County leading the state for quite a while now, not just by a little margin, but by a large margin. And, you know, help us help you and give us in our employees the ability to provide the care you need. So I appreciate your efforts to do that on. Do you know, with those efforts, it will allow us to continue to provide the care that we’re here to provide. Thanks, Tammy. Thank you. And now we will go. Teoh, the chief clinical officer for the prison health upstate. That’s Dr Window James. Dr James. Thank you, Tammy. I’d like to thank all of my colleagues in the upstate health systems for the chance today to talk as a group. As a community of health care providers to the citizens of upstate. We came to you in summer and we said that we were at a critical juncture with our bed capacity. And we’re well beyond that at this point. We have done many, many things in that period of time since we talked to you last about this. To do what we can to increase the capacity of all the systems of the upstate we have done is much as we can dio, we need the partnership with the community to help us steer through this last few months until we can begin a large scale vaccinations of the public and hopefully get this under control. The Kobe 19 vaccines were just now rolling out to the front line providers that we have to take care of all of the people of the upstate. We’re doing as much as we can to get them vaccinated as fast as we can, and we hope we can get that done. Uh, before the first of the year, a least early in in January, there will be another few months before we can get the at risk population vaccinated. So we’re not quite to the point of being at the at the end of the tunnel here. We’re getting close, but we still need cooperation to protect all of our community members that air high risk for this virus. It’ll be several months after that, probably into the early split spring, early summer before we can vaccinate the general population. What does this mean? Why am I saying this? We have a light at the end of the tunnel. We still have a lot of people that are very much at risk of this virus. Going into the holiday season, we saw a significant rise in the number of Kobe patients after Thanksgiving, and we absolutely are dealing with record numbers today. We’re dealing with more covert pet fires patients in this system in every system in the upstate that we saw in the summer. And it is taxing the ability of these systems provide care that you need. We need you to help us. So why are we talking to you today? We need you to take precautions during Christmas in new years. We hope next year can be a much more normal Christmas This year. We have to be careful. We need the cooperation of everybody in the community to help us keep you. Well, what do we need you to dio? Practice social distancing meticulously Wash your hands where a mask, please. I know that a lot of people don’t like mask, but they are the single best thing besides hand washing and social distancing that we have to mitigate the spread of this virus don’t travel or being large crowds during this period is going to be a huge, huge temptation, especially on New Year’s Eve. For everybody to get together and watch the ball drop. Try to do it from home. This year please. We need you to help us with this. We hope this vaccine will be very effective. And we’re in very, very certain. At least I am that it is. And we will see then end to this need towards the summer. But right now, we way have a very, very big problem in the upstate with respect to volume of patients. Do everything you can to stay safe with your relatives over the holidays. Especially the elder relatives. Do a video call. Don’t collect in a large crowd. We’re seeing lots and lots of this spread within the families and the elder The elders air not doing well with this vaccine with this virus. Please help us have a safe holiday and enjoy it. But do it a little different this year. Take advantages from technology and try to use the videos as much as you can. Thank you, Danny. Okay. Thank you, Dr James. Now we will go to Dr Matthew Logan. He’s the chief medical officer, an officer and VP of medical affairs at Self regional. Thank you, Tammy. Um, you know, it’s self regional. Were in a similar situation to the other hospitals in the upstate of South Carolina. Uh, since Thanksgiving, we have seen are coated in patient volumes double as well as our percent of people testing positive through our testing lines. E personally, I’m in, er, physician by trade, and I’ve seen first hand some of the regret on faces of family members who have had no symptoms when they gather for Thanksgiving. Onley toe later developed symptoms and realized they’d expose their loved ones. One of these patients, for example, is severely sick on the ventilator in our intensive care unit. Right now, there’s a lot of misinformation about covert on social media, and I assure you that covert Israel on, I hope that our population in the upstate will try to take it real seriously this Christmas break. We don’t wanna be the people that look back on Christmas 2020 with regret thinking of what we could have done and help keep our loved ones safe. So be safe. Like our my colleagues have said, avoid large gatherings as much as possible. If you are getting together with family, keep it to small groups as much as possible and meet outside as well. If possible, try to maintain 6 ft of distance between you and others not living in your home. Wash your hands where a mask around those not living in your home is also key. Andi, don’t go to any gathering If you don’t feel even if you just feel a little tickle in your throat, it’s just not worth it. Um, be particularly aware of precautions for those over 65. Those with diabetes, those with heart, lung disease and other mobility’s. Um, like Dr James said, we can get on the other side of this vaccine is around the corner. Just hold a little bit longer. And we think that by this summer, hopefully we will start to see some improvements in maybe a little, Uh, not not as required as much of the mask wearing and what not, hopefully the latter part of 21. So thank you all now we will go Thio Spartanburg Regional Health Care Systems. Chief Medical Officer Dr Christopher Lambert does e. Uh, I’m working on that one either. Hold on. All right. I hope you can hear me. Thank you, Tammy. It’s large, dizzy, but that’s okay. I’ve heard different different themes on that voice on that name. Um you heard from from all of our colleagues here today. And I believe this is the first time that all five systems have made a joint statement, and I think that that speaks to the seriousness of what we’re talking about. There’s probably no one that hasn’t been affected by this pandemic. Clearly, we’re all tired. We’re all worn out and in some way, shape or form. No matter what you do, no matter what your age, no matter where you live, you are affected by this, and I think we’d all like it to go away. We have an opportunity here to do a couple things. One is to get a little bit of control over it before and after the holidays. As everyone has already said, we’re seeing higher and higher highs each and every day. I spoke to a group just before Thanksgiving, and at that time I told them that we had approximately 70 or so in patients with co vid in our system, and I thought that that was extraordinarily high and I was very concerned with how we were gonna be able to manage over the upcoming weeks, and unfortunately, the upcoming weeks occurred pretty much as we predicted. Which is to say that the numbers continue to rise. We have more than doubled the number of patients that are in the hospital with Cove it and we don’t see any decline anytime soon. That’s been the case of all the upstate hospitals. That puts an enormous stress on all of us the doctors, the nurses, all the folks who are taking care of our community. We’re doing the best we can. But at some point we, too, are human, and we need your help. You’ve heard that message before. We really need your help. We need you to practice distancing. We need you to be smart about the holiday gatherings. It’s so hard to ask people to say, Just do a zoom for Christmas or for New Year’s, but it’s safe. And if we get big families together, if we get lots of friends together, they’re coming from different places. We know what’s going to happen. We know we’re gonna have more positive cases. We know we’re gonna have more hospitalizations, and unfortunately, that always leads to more deaths. We’re closing in on about 4500 deaths in South Carolina, so far from Kobe. And I can tell you that all the folks were speaking today and speaking for all of the folks that we represent, we really don’t want to see anyone more way want this thing to end. So you’ve heard that vaccines were coming, but you’ve also heard that’s gonna take some time. It’s gonna be several months, several months before we can get everybody vaccinated and before we could get a better control on transmission and exposure. So we need to take action today. We need to do the things we can dio, where the masks practice distancing. Be smart over the holiday in terms of getting together with large groups. Please, please, please don’t do it and wash your hands. Of course, um, there are some additional precautions that have been mentioned before. Clearly, if you’ve got folks who are of older age or who have significant medical problems, you need to be even more careful. Let’s buy ourselves in time, give us a few more months, and I think that will be making our way out of this. And that light at the at the end of the tunnel will become really light. But we’re still well in the tunnel and we need your help. We need the community’s help to help get us through that. Thank you. Well, I’m just I’m not gonna turn my video on, but I just let you take the first question that we received. So the first question is, um, that viewers wanted to ask about medications and supplements or other things that doctors are using to treat less severe or more severe Covic. Case is kind of like the treatment plan and things that were using their working for patients. Sure. So unfortunately, there is no cure for Kobe. We continue to provide supportive care across the world. A variety of different therapies have been tried, but there’s nothing out there that acts as a cure or prevents you from getting co vid other than the things that we are saying, which is, try to avoid contact and close contact with other people as much as you can wear the masks and wash your hands. Um, that’s why a vaccine is so important, right? That gives us an opportunity Thio not get infected in the first place and not transmit it. But the vaccines are not readily available yet it’s still going to take some more time. So there is no there is no cure out there in case anyone’s wondering. There’s no magic pill. That’s why doing these preventative measures being smart, being safe on biding our time until we can get out of this, that’s what’s really important. All right with that, I’m gonna go to the doctor. Logan, this is, ah, question about visitation, and I know every hospitals a little different so he can talk about it from his hospital, and then we’ll go from there. So the person is asking about when there there is a parents that has a child that’s in the hospital are in the ER. Are they allowed to usually go with their child? Um, if the child is older than 18, is the question um, and how does your hospital are you addressing visitation for covert patients or those in the E. D. So in our emergency department, we allow one visitor with the patient a t anyone time, unless if the patient is there with covitz symptoms and are has Koven thing, we don’t allow visitors in that situation way. Do allow a parent or guardian to be with pediatric patient in the hospital, a swell somewhere, this department. And it’s a visitation that I think all those policies have been working fairly well, Dr Logan. Yes, they have. I mean, that that’s one of the hardest things, Honestly, is the restricted visitation. I know people wanna be with their family members when they’re in the hospital, but the same time way. Actually, we’re looking at reducing Are changing our visitation policies. Um, kind of in late summer, early fall. And then we started seeing a little resurgence. Eso we decided just to kind of leave it where it is, Um, as the as the fall, uh, kind of progress. And certainly now, after Thanksgiving, we’re seeing the resurgence. So way decided just kind of leave our visitation policies in place. For now, I think the other upstate hospitals there’s a little difference between each of us. We all have restricted visitation. Onda. We have been fortunate to be able to collaborate on visitation policies as well across the upstate to make sure we’re doing the safest thing for our patients in the hospital. Okay, the next question I’ll go to Dr James. Yes, ma’am. There you go. So the question is about we get this question often from the media. They ask about capacity, you know? How do you How close are you to capacity? And I see you. And I know that’s different everywhere. But no, you could take that in general, Dr James. So in general, when you look across the state, we still have I see you capacity. When you look at it by region, you look at the upstate the upstate capacity is significantly tapped. We have We are all juggling our beds. We went What do I mean by that? We e think Dr Blacks don’t spoke to at best we When one person leaves, we’re putting another person right back into the bed behind them. So it varies by region in the state, depending on the number of cases, new cases that we’re seeing in the rate of rise. The rate of rise in the upstate has been significantly higher than anywhere else in the state for the last several weeks, and it has is putting strain on every system in the upstate. That’s why we’re we’re having this brother unprecedented joint conference today. We need everybody to hear that we need. We need some help and we need public to help pick up. They’re part of this and do what we’re asking them to do to help mitigate spread of this because we are extremely concerned that if we see the rate of rise continue to go up. And I think we have some detect charts that we may not be able to present live but will be available later when we see the raid arises rapid in its asshole Aya’s we’re seeing right now. It doesn’t take long to totally consumed the capacity. And we’ve said this before. This is a supply and demand type of problem. Weaken supply. We can supply beds, but we cannot supply them faster than the demand is going up. And so there will come a point where things tip over and we don’t want that to happen. That’s what we’re having these conversations today. But across the state there are beds. The upstate is probably straining way more than anybody else right now, but we’re beginning to see this happen across the whole state. It’s just not a degree. We’re seeing it in the Upstate. Yes, thank you, Dr James. The next question is for Dr Mok. I’ll go to that. Dr. Mark, the question is related. Thio, uh, you have begun wave one of employees vaccinations and you’re scheduled to continue them through the rest of the week. Can you provide an update on the vaccination process at amid Do you know how long it will be before all 1000 doses off? Your vaccine is utilized. And do you have any other details off? What will come with wave, too? Thank you, Tammy. I think you’ve got Dr Blackstone Pool. Yeah, hold on. Yeah, let me let me go to you now. There we go. Thank you. Way look very similar, but so yeah, the way began vaccinations last Thursday with a few, uh, trial to check our process and began in earnest on Friday. And we’re vaccinating somewhere between 152 100 of our employees a day. And and that’s what’s going on today. We we did get additional vaccine in this morning, so we have continued to open up Thio more people and send mawr invites for our our employees to coming and schedule. Aziz, we get more vaccine, so we are into wave to already. All right, So the next question I’m gonna go to Dr Blackstone. Alright. So that blacks on the question is about how do we think fundamentally and in particular, why the upstate is the state’s worst hot spot, not in terms of number of cases, because that can be related to higher population, but in the vast difference in infection rates. And do you have a comment about seeing double the number of covert patients? So I’ll start with the number of Komen patients, you know, just like that Guy Lombardo’s, he said, We’ve doubled since right before Thanksgiving. You know, in Kobane Patients is exactly what we predicted, You know, as far as the upstate numbers. If you go through Greenville in the surrounding area and you walk in areas like big Box stores as well as you know, hearing people have gatherings, it doesn’t surprise us. While we have the numbers we have in the upstate. I mean, when you look at Greenville and Spartanburg counties, you know, running higher and neck and neck, I mean, from that standpoint, you know, it’s, you know, it’s pretty obvious why this has happened. You know, there’s a segment of the population who is either just tired of Koven like we all are and have just said, You know what? You know, I’m just not going to do this, but unfortunately, what the worrisome part is we’re starting even see it in the older population who, you know who aren’t following the same guidelines or not being encouraged to follow. The same guidelines are being included in gatherings where they really shouldn’t be because of their high risk. So, honestly, we talked about this every week between the five of us and, you know, in our health systems, this doesn’t surprise us, Given what we see in the community, right? I was gonna see if one of the other physicians wanted to add to that. Um let’s see, Maybe we’ll go back to Dr Lombardozzi. Hold on him. There you go. Yeah. Thanks, Tammy. Um, yeah, You know, it is It’s always hard to talk about this because e think you’re sensing that frustration that we all have in health care right now we know what needs to be done. We also know how difficult this is from a an individual perspective, right? It’s really easy. Thio, take the easy path and Thio not wear a mask or to not practice social distancing and say, Well, it’s just me, it’s just my risk. That’s true, except that if you get coded one, you could get sick. And two, If you get Kobe, you’re going to transmit it to someone else and that person can get sick and that’s what we’re seeing. We need people to do the things that we’ve asked them to dio, we know those things work when people are actively practicing, distancing when they’re actively wearing masks. When they’re being smart and being safe, then the numbers go down and we can manage it. But when they don’t, then the numbers go up and they’ll continue to go up. And the reason we’re getting together today is because we are extraordinarily concerned about what’s gonna happen when the holidays come from, where people get together in large groups and then we’re gonna have tragedies occurring in January. So that’s why we’re pleading with you. That’s why we’re presenting the strong message today. We desperately need people to do the things that we know will work Well, I think we’re We’ve answered all the questions in the chat. So, um, Dr Lombardi, if you have one other thing that you would like to make sure you add and then I’ll go back to all of the other spokesperson and have them add something Also, Um, sure. I think one of the things that get misconstrued when when you hear doctors talking about, uh, really prescriptions, write a prescription for health. We’re asking people wear masks, practice distancing, don’t get together in large groups. Here’s what we’re not saying. We’re not saying you don’t want Thio have normalcy. In fact, we want to get back to normalcy, but we want it to be healthy normalcy. We want businesses to thrive. We want your kids to be able to go back to school in a meaningful way, not have to worry about all the destruct disruption that’s occurred today way we want. We want the same things you do as a community, Andi. And that’s why we’re presenting this message today. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, we’ll go to Dr Matthew Logan. Dr. Logan. Hey. Thank you. Yeah, I totally agree. We all want to get back to a sense of normalcy. Um, you know, just like we talked about this whole conference is we really want to be super precautious over the coming several weeks over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Um, it’s so hard. It’s such a a great time, usually for family and friends to get together. Um, but let’s just do a little bit different this year again. Try to keep it to small groups if you’re around people that don’t live in your home with you. Um, you really need to try to continue to social distance and wear masks again around people that aren’t in your little home bubble. Um, those that live in your home. It’s fine, but when you’re with people that you don’t live with you every day, that’s where the exposures sent teams tend to occur. So so be careful. Give us some time hanging there just for a little bit longer. Uh, if you guys can give another 3 to 6 months, we could get more vaccination out in public. We could get on the other side of the cove and get back to normal, and hopefully next year we could have a normal Christmas and New Year’s. Thanks. Thank you with that. We’ll go to Dr James. Dr James. Yes, ma’am, I would like maybe in closing proposed that, you know, we will be able to release some of these charts to the public. And I think it would be good for them to look at what we’re what we’ve got, especially the D hack charts where it shows the volume of rise that we’re seeing in this community, Um, for for five health systems in. And then they cover the entire upstate area to get together like we have done today and and talk directly to the community for help. Please don’t lose the importance of that. This is this is something that you don’t see happen very often. We’re all deeply concerned that if we start off the new year with a rise from the point we’re at today, that we will have a significantly difficult time managing this. We can do this together and we have asked this multiple times. I know we’re tired of this. I’m tired of it. We’re all tired of it. But we’re so close to the end of this. Let’s don’t blow it now we can make this work. If you will distance yourselves. Do not travel unnecessarily where a mass wash your hands and do not collecting large groups outside of your immediate family. This Christmas is Muchas that’s going to be difficult to do. It is in the best interest of the entire community and you each one of us. We are responsible to the health of our families and ourselves and each other, and we need to take that seriously. I know off the beat on this, like a broken record, we have to get together as a community and we have to do what we can to mitigate spread of this in a way that we can manage through until mid early spring. Um, if we do that, we’re going to do fine. But we’re at extremely high levels of this disease in our hospitals today and we are pleading with the public to help us manage this. We cannot manage this without your help. It’s going to take a team effort on the part of the whole community, and I have faith in this community. I think we can do this. We did it in the summer, and we brought these numbers back down very rapidly because I think the public listen, and we just need them to do that now, if they will, will be fine. And we can get everybody to the vaccinations and get past this. It may be summer will be a little bit more like what we would consider normal. But give us some help here. We’re begging way. We need to help. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. James will go to Dr Blackstone. Thank you, Tammy, Just to reiterate. I mean, you know, everybody’s talked about the guidelines. I mean, we’re truly pleading for your help, but what I’ll focus on is we get asked a lot about capacity and particular issue capacity. You know, we’ve already all extended our ability and created badge to increase bed capacity, floor bed capacity as well as I see you capacity, but has been talked about before. There is a limit and were pushed up against that limit. Now, from the standpoint that there’s only so far that we can actually expand in all of our facilities and still be able to staff the beds. You know that you know that we have. So you know, I agree with everybody. You know. You’ve heard Dr James and I hear you’ve heard other. You know, you’ve heard the others in the media. I mean, we literally begging you to help us as a community to keep us in a position that we can treat patients because none of us want to get to the point where, you know, patients show up and we don’t have anywhere to put anybody. Uh, that’s not the situation anybody wants to be in. And we’re trying and doing everything we can from our standpoint to avoid that. We just need your help. And I agree for another 3 to 6 months. If you’ll just help us. And we saw you do it in the first search, all the numbers went back down. You know, in May we were able to go back and start elective surgeries again. Get back to some normalcy in the hospitals, so we know you could do it. We’re just asking you to do it. Thio, help us get over the hump until the vaccine gets wildly distributed. Thanks, Jeremy. And then we will go to Doctor Mok. Well, I’ll echo Tammy the comments of all my colleagues. Everybody’s hitting the nail on the head. Uh, these were not asymptomatic cases in South Carolina. They’re going up that you’re seeing these air, What we’re talking about. In the cases where people are sick enough, they require hospitalization, possibly requiring I see you stay. And we are all stretched to our capacity and is Doctor Blackstone said that is in spite of increasing capacity over the last 6 to 8 months, Azzawi saw this thing coming. But we’re we’re tight on beds were certainly, uh, tight on staff nurses, especially to staff those beds. Andi and all this is something that can be improved if people in the community will change the way they’re managing their day to day activities. So, like the others, I just played with people to please take precautions on keep your family safe, keep your friends safe. Um, we would just ask that everybody would try toe do the best they can over the coming holidays. Please. All right. I think that is all that we have. Um well, that’s all that we have for today. Um, and we did put the chart for the media by region in the chat on B. If you have additional questions, remember all of the hospital P Io’s are on this call and you have all their numbers, so please contact one of them. If there’s something specific that you’re looking for that we didn’t provide here and this meeting is being recorded. And I know some of you were also recording, So if there’s somebody who needs it who wasn’t on this call, please let me or any of the hospital pios I’ll make sure they get it also, Um, no. And we’ll make sure we get it to those who couldn’t attend. We appreciate everybody attending today, and all of our upstate hospital leaders are working really hard in the community. And they’re all working together to try to keep the community well. And we ask that our community joining with us as we do that we also wish that everybody have a great holiday this week. And with that, that would be the end of our call. Thank you. Have a great holiday. Mhm.