Coronavirus
Kentucky hospital hits COVID-19 capacity. CEO pleads with community to wear masks.
King’s Daughters Medical Center in Ashland has reached its capacity for COVID-19 patients, President and CEO Kristie Whitlatch announced Friday as she pleaded with the community to help stop a surge of coronavirus infections by wearing masks and social distancing.
“Our infectious disease specialists and other medical professionals are very concerned at how quickly and widely COVID-19 is spreading locally,” Whitlatch wrote in a Facebook post Friday. “Not in some big city but our hometowns.”
She said the hospital is full and working to open a third nursing unit to care for coronavirus patients, which is unprecedented in its 120-year history. The hospital serves Eastern Kentucky and southern Ohio.
“Many of these patients are very ill and many of our physicians, nurses and support team have been struck by the virus,” she wrote. “I understand people have differing opinions, but we know for a fact it is dangerous and deadly because we live it every day.”
This month, 22% of new COVID-19 cases required inpatient care, according to hospital data. At the current rate, September is on track to have 144 admissions for impatient COVID-19 care, which is more than double the inpatient case volume from August.
King’s Daughters Medical Center has 320 beds and almost 75% of them are occupied, she said.
COVID-19 is not just affecting people with underlying health conditions or nursing home patients, but “is attacking babies, children and healthy, active men and women who have no idea how they were exposed,” she stated.
From Sept. 1 to Sept. 17, King’s Daughters Health System diagnosed 359 new COVID-19 positive cases. In comparison, the system treated 840 cases from March to August.
As of Thursday, eight patients had died of COVID-19 at the hospital this month. There were 13 deaths in August. There were no deaths in March, May, June and July, and one death in April.
Pediatric cares are on the rise, too. In the first half of September, 12.8% (46 of 359) of coronavirus cases were in children under 18, compared to 7.8% (31 of 398) in August.
As of Sunday, the Boyd County Health Department had reported a total of 416 COVID-19 cases and six deaths since the pandemic began. In September, the county had 170 positive cases.
Whitlatch encouraged the community to wear a mask in public, practice social distancing, stay at home as much as possible, avoid gathering and wash their hands.
The 214-bed Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital closed in May, leaving King’s Daughters Medical Center as Ashland’s sole hospital.
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