The Habersham County Hospital Authority met Tuesday to discuss a range of issues regarding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, most notable the recent decline of the positivity rate of those contracting the virus within the community. Habersham Medical Center (HMC) averaged around 35 admitted to the Medical Surgical floor and four patients in the hospital’s ICU the last four weeks, according to HMC CEO Tyler Williams, with around 70 percent of those patients testing positive for coronavirus, a figure that had at one point reached as high as 82 percent.
More than 90 percent of patients admitted for COVID-19 to HMC were not vaccinated, Williams said, adding that in the month of August there was an average of 86 patients per day – with the highest number of patients on a single day reaching 108. This figure dropped in September, Williams noted, with an average of 80 patients each day.
“It looks like it is starting to trend down a little bit,” Williams said. “As far as [Emergency Department] volume goes, anywhere between 25-30 percent of those patients are COVID positive that are coming to the emergency room.”
Williams went on to explain that while Habersham County’s COVID-19 positivity rate spiked as high as more than 20 percent in the last four weeks, the number of people in the county testing positive has dropped to 14 percent in the past week.
“Here, again, I’m going to be cautiously optimistic and say that it’s moving in the right direction,” Williams said, adding that the vaccination rate in the county has creased from 31 percent to 35, with a seven percent boost in the number of people who have received at least one dose.
Williams also told the board that ReGENco, the monoclonal antibody infusion treatment used to treat COVID-19, is experiencing supply shortages.
“The state of Georgia as a whole has been put on allocation from the federal government,” Williams said. “We’re going to be getting 25 percent of what we have been seeing as a state.”
“We don’t know how this is going to affect operations around the hospital,” Williams added. “At our peak we were giving out, in two days-worth of ER, visits basically what we’ll give out in a week now. We were using this to help keep people out of the hospital. Not having this as a tool to fight COVID could potentially increase the number of hospitalizations that we continue to see.”
Williams also announced that the hospital’s COVID-19 vaccine incentive – which grants a $400 bonus to employees who elect to receive the vaccine – has proven to be at least moderately effective, with 34 more employees.
“Before we instituted this bonus we had 208 employees vaccinated which was a rate of 34 percent. Over the past four weeks, 34 more employees have taken us up on this to increase our numbers up to 40 percent,” Williams said.
Williams also reported a growing interest among employees considering the COVID-19 vaccine.
Williams also announced that the hospital has received new beds for the Medical Surgical floor, purchased using CARES Act funds. New beds for the nursing home should be arriving in the near future, Williams said.