WASHINGTON — More than 3,000 people across the DMV are spending Thanksgiving in a hospital bed battling coronavirus, according to state tracking data. Medical professionals fear that number could go up as some Americans proceed with Thanksgiving gatherings.
“The doctors will tell you that COVID appears as a manifest as real sickness about three weeks after exposure and then just a week or two after that, people who are really ill end up in the hospital," Bob Atlas, the president and CEO of Maryland Hospital Association said. "So, you count those days and you've put it right around Christmas when we could have a post-Thanksgiving burden in our hospitals."
Atlas said there are over 1,450 patients in Maryland hospitals Thursday and that number is climbing by about 50 patients per day.
“Our hospitals have space and staff available still," Atlas said. "We want to keep it that way. We want people to do the right thing and not overload our hospitals. At the rate we’re going it could be very dicey by Christmas time, and that's not a time when people want to find themselves in the hospital."
On Thursday, Virginia reported 1,601 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, which is slightly short of the highest peak Virginia has had in terms of overall hospitalizations, according to Julian Walker, the vice president of communications for the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association.
Walker said hospitals are facing a significant challenge as the weather gets colder and families begin to gather for holidays.
“This is the period of time when the spread can intensify both because of the colder weather and winter season, as well as the holidays and family gatherings," Walker said. "If people aren't taking it seriously, that potentially increases the risk of transmission to a larger number of people at a period of time when the number of confirmed cases is going up and hitting record numbers, so that's a concern."
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Walker said despite a surge in hospitalizations, the state has thousands of available hospital beds.
“The upshot of this is that it's not so much a capacity challenge at this point, meaning it's not a question of available hospital beds, because there are thousands of available hospital beds in Virginia," he said. "But the continued upward trajectory of cases puts a strain both on capacity in the grand scheme of , things as well as a real strain on staff on the frontline health care workers who have been battling this pandemic for eight or nine months now."
Both Maryland and Virginia have bed space, but Atlas worries the limits in Maryland could be pushed if cases continue to surge.
“If we keep growing at 50 a day then that's another 1,500 patients and right now we've got about 1,000 beds available across the state," Atlas said. "And so, you know, we don't want to push that limit."
