COVID-19 Patients In More Than 20 Percent Of County Hospital Beds

CAMDEN COUNTY, NJ — Twenty-three percent of all hospital beds throughout Camden County are occupied by a patient who is being treated for the coronavirus, according to the latest data.

Those numbers are highest at Virtua Hospital in Voorhees, where the latest federal data shows capacity at 90 percent, and 33 percent of all beds filled with COVID-19 patients.

The federal government released new, hospital-level data on Monday. NPR, using analysis from the University of Minnesota's COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project, built a tool that shows hospital-by-hospital information.

The data comes from the week of Dec. 4 through 11.

You can access the NPR tool here

At Camden County hospitals, an average of 23 percent of all patients beds are currently being occupied by COVID-19 patients, according to the data.

At Virtua Hospital in Camden, 24 percent of beds are occupied by patients being treated for COVID-19; at Jefferson Hospital in Stratford, that number is 20 percent; and at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, that number is 16 percent.

While there is no clear threshold, NPR cites hospital experts saying that anything above 10 percent is concerning and anything above 20 percent represents "extreme stress" for a hospital.

As coronavirus cases have spiked in recent weeks, New Jersey health officials have urged residents to stay home, wear masks and observe social distancing in order to curb the spread of the virus and keep patients out of rapidly filling hospitals.

On Wednesday, Gov. Phil Murphy announced that New Jersey had 3,672 people hospitalized, 3,462 of whom were COVID-19 positive and 210 were awaiting confirmation.

The hospitalization number is well short of New Jersey’s peak of 8,200 during the spring, but Murphy has expressed fear that the state could hit those numbers again if residents don’t do enough to protect themselves.

Also, 489 people were admitted to New Jersey hospitals on Tuesday, and 451 were discharged. Of those, 721 were in intensive care units and 482 of them were on ventilators.