Hospitals prepare for surge of COVID-19 patients
EVERETT — A flood of COVID-19 patients could overwhelm Snohomish County’s four acute-care hospitals in coming weeks, exhausting supplies, jeopardizing health care providers and potentially requiring physicians to make life or death decisions about who gets care.
“If it’s too horrendous, at some point it’s going to be beyond us to respond and people will have to make hard decisions about who gets treated and who doesn’t,” County Executive Dave Somers said.
Between them, Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, Swedish Edmonds, EvergreenHealth Monroe and Cascade Valley Hospital in Arlington, operate 721 staffed hospital beds, according to the Washington State Hospital Association. Of those, only 87 are intensive care unit beds, the type most likely to be needed for severe COVID-19 cases. And many of those beds already are full.
As of Saturday, the number of those confirmed or presumed positive for the virus in Snohomish County stood at 447, including 10 fatalities. But a continuing shortage of testing kits almost guarantees that more have been infected. Modeling studies of the current regional outbreak suggest that several thousand infections have occurred already and that without intervention, incidence will continue to double every 5 to 7 days, with an estimated cumulative 25,000 total infections in Snohomish and King counties occurring by April 7, according to the Snohomish Health District.
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One has to think this is what he wants...............
