The physician who oversees the coronavirus incidence response at Northeast Georgia Health System said the community has grown "a little bit complacent," and he thinks that's a big contributor to surging COVID-19 cases in the region.
Dr. John Delzell made his comments in reference to the 168 COVID-19 patients in treatment Thursday at NGHS facilities, the highest daily positive count in the hospital system to date.
"We're at a level that's basically the same as what we were back at the end of April, so, yes, we're definitely worried about managing this," Delzell told AccessWDUN. "We've done so much community work trying to encourage people to distance and to wear masks. As people kind of get used to COVID, I think they get a little complacent."
Delzell said the behavior in the community will dictate the patient trends at the hospital campuses, and that's what he's been watching since the first of the month.
"You see people out at the stores that aren't wearing masks and that's the part that worries me. As people do more of that, we get more cases in the hospital.," Delzell said. "The evidence is very clear that consistent mask wearing across our community decreases transmission and ultimately will decrease the number of patients that get the disease and that decreases the number of patients that get admitted to the hospitals."
Delzell said while NGHS reports daily hospitalizations, he keeps his eye on trending numbers. In June, the number of cases plateaued, but after the Fourth of July holiday, he began to watch positive cases and hospitalization numbers move in the wrong direction.
"Internally, we use a measure of a seven-day rolling average as opposed to looking at it day to day, just because there is some variability on when the tests come back...and that sort of thing," Delzell said. "[For example] on the 17th [of July], we were at 106 and now [on July 24] we're at 155, it's definitely going up over the last week. To me, that's the part that we pay the most attention to. We want that trend going down - we'd like it to go down to zero."
Delzell said the patients who are being admitted to the hospital with the latest surge are not requiring the use of ventilators as much as those who were hospitalized in April.
"That's really purposeful," Delzell said. "Our physicians have learned a lot about how to care for patients with COVID...and so our critical care doctors are slower to put people onto ventilators because the patients are doing better using other methods of treatment."
Delzell said even as hospital admissions for COVID are up, the NGHS supply of PPE (personal protective equipment) for frontline healthcare workers is adequate.
Delzell said he believes "we're in for the long haul" with the coronavirus pandemic, noting that until a vaccine is available, everyone will have to learn to live with the virus - and will have to do their part to prevent the spread of the illness.
"I expect we'll continue to see this over the rest of the summer and into the fall," Delzell said.
Follow this link to see the latest patient data for Northeast Georgia Health System.
