Rockland Coronavirus Update: Hospitalizations Rising

ROCKLAND COUNTY, NY — There were 63 people hospitalized in Rockland County with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 as of Monday, county health officials reported.

That's up from 18 hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Rockland Oct. 6, which at the time was considered a spike.

Hospitalizations are the main concern for public health officials as the pandemic surges and the holiday season is in full swing.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday announced strategies he hopes will beat back a looming surge in coronavirus hospitalizations over the coming weeks as the statewide infection rate surpassed 4 percent. The plan builds off the lessons learned during the past nine months, he said.

The announcement came as the number of New Yorkers hospitalized with COVID-19 climbed to 3,774 Monday. That's up from 429 on Aug. 29 and up from 1,085 on Oct. 29. Unlike in March, the increase in hospitalizations has affected both upstate and downstate.

Under the new strategy, the state Department of Health will include factors such as regional hospital bed capacity, ICU capacity, staffing ratios, and daily hospital admissions as part of the analysis and metrics used to determine which geographic areas qualify as micro-cluster zones.

The Hudson region's hospitalizations now match their level of late March. That compares to the the region's 101 COVID-19 patients hospitalized Oct. 6, according to the NY Health Department and just 39 at the beginning of September.

Health officials began Monday to initiate emergency hospital measures to prepare the state's hospital system for an expected surge in new admissions over the upcoming weeks. Specifically, these measures include:

1. Hospital systems must begin to identify retired nurses and doctors to bolster staff;
2. Hospital systems in Erie County must suspend elective surgeries to create new bed capacity for COVID patients;
3. Hospital systems must begin balancing patient loads across their individual hospital facilities;
4. Prepare plans to utilize emergency field hospitals;
5. Prepare plans to increase hospital bed capacity by 50 percent;
6. Prepare plans to implement statewide 'Surge and Flex' operations (similar to load balancing, but patient shifts would occur across all hospital systems, as opposed to within individual hospital systems)
7. Prepare plans to staff emergency field hospitals; and
8. Confirm availability of resources in existing stockpiles.

The state Department of Health will also be launching a new, statewide hospital metric tracking system.

Rockland County's rolling average coronavirus positivity rate is no longer the highest in the Hudson region.

At the beginning of October, during a spike after the High Holy Days, there were 1,649 confirmed cases in Rockland. As of Dec. 2, there were 1,828.