'It's a real relief': OK Hospital Association discusses recent low COVID case counts
TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) — With COVID case numbers still low, the Tulsa Health Department is reporting just 337 new cases this week, and hospitals are finally getting a bit of a COVID break.
“We definitely are seeing things slow down in the area of COVID for our hospitals so that they can start to recover, especially to staffing levels,” said LaWanna Halstead, Oklahoma Hospital Association vice president of quality. “Just because there are fewer COVID patients doesn’t automatically mean we have a lot more staff.”
At Saint Francis, officials are reporting just 42 people across all of their hospital's systems are being treated for COVID, with only 15 in isolation, nearing the lowest it's been since before the Delta surge last summer.
This is good news for hospitals across the state.
But even with less staff, the decline in COVID patients has allowed hospitals to start to put a dent in their large backlogs of non-COVID-related treatments.
“You know, kind of a medium to small size hospital at the end of this surge, which would have been when the numbers started coming down a couple of weeks ago,” said Halstead. “They had like 300 surgeries that they had put off.”
While we’re starting to see COVID numbers increase on the East Coast, Halstead says that Omicron is not as vicious as its Delta predecessor.
They’re hopeful we’ve hit a point where care can be balanced.
“Today, maybe, they can maybe manage their patient load. They can take care of people that have chronic diseases. They can take care of people that need their surgeries done,” said Halstead. “It’s a real relief, in that way, not to wonder if they’re going to be able to meet the needs of their patients.”