EAMC CENSUS HIGHEST SINCE START OF PANDEMIC
While EAMC’s COVID-19 census ebbed and flowed a little over the weekend—and sits at 75 today—its overall census is the highest it has been since the pandemic began. At the Opelika campus alone, EAMC was caring for 276 total inpatients as of noon today. In addition, the Emergency Department was full with 26 patients, with 9 of them waiting to be admitted, and 26 more in the waiting room.
“This is the concern that many health officials brought up in the fall—the collision of a post-holiday COVID peak and the winter census that’s typically higher than any other time of the year,” said John Atkinson EAMC spokesman “Plus, some of our employees are working outside of their normal area, such as the nurses in the COVID Infusion Center, and nurses and other staff at the vaccine center, the call center and the testing site. Our hospital family just continues to pick each other up and push forward. They’re really quite amazing.”
VACCINE TOTALS PICKING UP
Since beginning vaccine distribution in mid-December, EAMC has administered more than 8,000 shots. Of that total, about 6,000 were the first dose and the other 2,000 were for people receiving their second dose, also known as a booster shot. “Our vaccine throughput has ramped up in the past 10 days,” Atkinson stated, “and we have plans to provide even more doses per day beginning in the next week or so.”
Atkinson says those plans include moving the hospital’s vaccine clinic from its current location at the EAMC Education Center to an empty store front where they hope to provide up to 1,000 vaccine shots a day. The current capacity is about 500 a day.
“So far, we have been vaccinating multiple groups including healthcare workers, nursing home residents, physicians, first responders, and residents age 75 and up. I imagine it won’t be long before we open vaccination appointment requests to other groups, including those age 65 and older, and those who are immuno-compromised.”