MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – COVID cases within the Mon Health System are on the decline, according to president and CEO David Goldberg.
“Preston Memorial, Stonewall Jackson Memorial, Grafton City Hospital and the Mon Health Medical Center had an all-time high of 55 at one time,” Goldberg said on WAJR’s Talk of the Town,” So, we’ve had capacity and we still have capacity to take care of people and their healthcare needs, but we are trending down.”
As of Tuesday, January 26 Mon Health System reported 11 COVID patients. Statewide, COVID-related hospitalizations are at 582, 152 people are in ICU and 64 are on ventilators.
“We assess every day those who are coming in needing elective surgery, we’re starting to do them more and more,” Goldberg said,” Because we don’t see the hospital beds overly filled with COVID patients and that was our concern.”
According to data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, new COVID cases are down more than 31 percent over the last two weeks and deaths are down about 2.5 percent nationwide. Add more vaccines being administered and additional doses in the pipeline, the picture would appear to signal a sustained positive trend.
“Now that schools are coming back into play, the university students are back and populations are mixing,” Goldberg said,” This is not the time to stop social distancing, not the time stop masking- wear your mask, be responsible and we can bend the curve.”
According to Jim Hoyer, director of the Joint Interagency Task Force, West Virginia receives 23,600 first doses each week and his staff works with federal agencies to increase that number on a daily basis.
As those numbers increase, places like the vaccination super clinic at the Morgantown Mall will be able get more people the vaccine.
“Use the infrastructure WVU Medicine put in place, what Dr. Smith and the health department has put in place at the armory and now bring it into one location that could be set up for the next month to get our community vaccinated.”