Issued July 27th, 2020 at 5:52 PM CDT

EAMC SEEKS MASK MANDATE EXTENSION

After decreasing two days and then increases two days, the trajectory of COVID-19 hospitalizations is still unknown 11 days after Governor Kay Ivey put a mask mandate into place on July 16. What Ricardo Maldonado, M.D., EAMC President and CEO Laura Grill and other officials at EAMC believe is that the mask mandate cannot end as scheduled this Friday, July 31.

“Our COVID-19 census is still very high in the hospital,” states Dr. Maldonado. “We have one floor that is full of COVID-19 patients (36), the ICU has 12 patients with the virus and another floor has the remainder of the COVID-19 patients.” Dr. Maldonado points out that some patients with COVID-19 stay in ICU for 3 weeks or longer. “If you consider a person’s length of stay once they make it to the ICU, we only need a few more who get sick enough to need ICU care and we will run out of ICU beds.”

Dr. Maldonado says that even though the EAMC staff has done an outstanding job keeping patients in a regular bed and out of the ICU, the odds eventually catch up to you. “Avoiding being transferred to ICU and placed on a ventilator is difficult when you have a census this high,” Maldonado states. “Not everyone responds to treatment and gets better. People with advanced age, multiple comorbidities or who simply don’t respond to our treatments and will eventually go on a ventilator.”

Knowing the mask mandate scheduled to end Friday gives Dr. Maldonado concern. “We need to lower our census first, and so do other hospitals. We feel strongly that Governor Ivey should extend it for several more weeks. Our COVID-19 census now is dangerously high, and we will likely go on critical care diversion this week meaning that patients in need of critical care will have to go to other hospitals.”

With school just two weeks away, Dr. Maldonado once again points to the importance of masks. “Wearing a face mask lowers transmission. There are still people in the community not wearing masks at appropriate times and in appropriate ways. Please train your kids and practice with them daily so they are used to wearing masks before returning to school.”

CALLS AND TESTING DIP SLIGHTLY

Calls to EAMC’s 528-SICK call center dropped slightly for the second straight week, helping testing volumes to dip for the first time in seven weeks. Of the 812 who were tested last week, 115 received a positive result for a positivity rate of 14.2 percent. At the Auburn University Medical Clinic, they tested 1,011 and had 70 confirmed as positive for a 6.9 percent positivity rate. The reason for the significant gap in positivity rates is that people who call 528-SICK are screened and must meet certain criteria to be tested. The AU Medical Clinic also screens callers, but people can choose to get tested regardless of the severity of their symptoms, or even lack thereof for people who may be asymptomatic carriers.

For complete Alabama COVID-19 information by county, please visit this ADPH link: https://covid19.alabama.gov/#live-updates

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