Hospital Expands Morgue Capacity By Leasing Refrigerated Trailer

SARASOTA, FL — To increase its morgue capacity, Sarasota Memorial Hospital has leased a refrigerated trailer, as COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths continue to increase in the hospital system.

“We leased a refrigerated trailer as a precautionary measure to expand the capacity of our morgue in case it is needed during this fourth wave of the pandemic. The trailer is not in use at the moment,” Kim Savage, SMH’s public information officer, wrote in an email to Patch.

In recent weeks, Sarasota Memorial has continued to break records for hospitalized coronavirus patients.

On Monday, there were 274 COVID-19 positive patients currently in the hospital system’s care, according to SMH’s coronavirus daily news update. Of this number, 48 were in ICU.

Since the start of the pandemic, the hospital has seen 322 deaths – including four deaths since Sunday.

During the week of Aug. 13-19, there were 2,772 new coronavirus cases and an 18.6 percent new case positivity rate reported in Sarasota County, according to the Florida Department of Health’s COVID-19 Weekly Situation Report for that period.

In a statement sent to the Sarasota County School Board Friday, Dr. Manuel Gordillo, medical director of infection prevention and control, said Sarasota Memorial set another record number of cases that day.

"No signs of slowing. School opening may exacerbate the upward trend," he wrote, calling this COVID-19 wave "a public health crisis leading to healthcare delivery crisis like we have never seen before."

As a result, Sarasota Memorial “is bursting at the seams,” Gordillo warned in a video shared with local media outlets Thursday.

He said about 90 percent of the COVID-19 patients seeking care at the hospital are unvaccinated. They’re also seeing a range of ages affected by the virus.

“It’s a much wider age range,” he said. “We’ve seen children and we’re seeing adolescents, but the majority of patients are probably now between 30 and the upper 90s…So, we’re seeing a lot more younger people coming into the hospital at a more advanced stage of the disease or a more rapidly progressive form of the disease.”

He credited Sarasota Memorial’s staff for their work during this stressful time, as they’ve been “under an incredible amount of pressure.”

Gordillo said, “I can’t say enough for our staff. Our staff has been heroic, resilient, dedicated, highly professional, compassionate. You can’t run out of adjectives describing them.”

He encourages the community to get vaccinated as a way to prevent the spread of the virus. While there are breakthrough cases – cases where individuals who are fully vaccinated test positive for COVID-19 – for the most part, the vaccine is keeping people out of the hospitals when they get sick.

“The vaccines are doing what they’re supposed to do, which is preventing you from dying, which is preventing you from landing sick in the hospital. They’re performing as it was prescribed and as the doctor ordered,” Gordillo said.