VA Hospitals Avoid Coronavirus Patient Surge As Curve Flattens

FREDERICKSBURG, VA — Hospital employees gathered in the atrium of Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg Thursday afternoon to give two women who had been hospitalized with the new coronavirus, or COVID-19, a rousing send-off as they were pushed in wheelchairs to the hospital exit. Behind their protective masks, the women could not hide their feelings of appreciation for the employees who turned out to wish them well as they traveled home to continue their recovery.

Like the women heading home, hospital officials also are breathing easier because new modeling is now showing that Virginia will likely avoid an unmanageable surge in coronavirus cases as long as the state sticks with its stay-at-home policy and social distancing.

Three weeks ago, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was picking alternative care sites in the densely populated areas of the state — Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hamptom Roads — to handle a surge in coronavirus cases. In anticipation for the surge, Mary Washington Hospital also had created a field hospital in the garage adjacent to its emergency room to handle the expected overflow.

But if the projections prove accurate, the Mary Washington Hospital garage and the alternative hospital sites across the state will not be needed.

“With the stay-at-home orders and the social distancing that have been taken so seriously by every member of the community, those models show that we are flattening the curve," Dr. Michael McDermott, president and chief executive officer of Mary Washington Healthcare, said Thursday night at a virtual town hall held by the health care system.

Almost three weeks ago, officials were expecting the peak number of coronavirus patients in the Fredericksburg area to be much higher than what Mary Washington Hospital has experienced.

Get the latest updates on the new coronavirus in Virginia as they happen. Sign up for free news alerts and a newsletter in your Patch town.

If coronavirus intensive care unit admissions had reached that peak number, Virginia's hospitals would not have had the capacity to care for everybody, McDermott said. By flattening the curve, Mary Washington Healthcare's facilities in Fredericksburg and Stafford County now have the capacity to treat every patient who comes in sick with the coronavirus, he said.

Northam also revealed last Monday that he has put on hold construction of the three alternative care facilities that could be turned into makeshift hospitals to relieve pressure off real hospitals should there be a surge of coronavirus patients. "I haven't decided to move forward at this stage with the alternative care facilities," the governor said at a press briefing.

But McDermott cautioned that Mary Washington Healthcare's hospitals and others across the state could easily reach their capacity in the coming weeks if people do not follow the governor's order to stay at home.

As of Thursday, 24 coronavirus patients at Mary Washington Hospital and Stafford Hospital had been discharged after being treated for the COVID-19 disease. At the two hospitals, 59 people who have tested positive for the coronavirus or who are awaiting the results of their coroanvirus tests are still hospitalized. A total of four people have died from the coronavirus at the two hospitals, McDermott said.

At the hospital's first town hall on April 1, McDermott put out a 5,000 mask challenge to the Fredericksburg community. In response, 7,000 masks were donated to the hospital system, with the majority of them donated by volunteers at Lifepoint Church.

The health care system still needs donations, including N95 masks, surgical masks and disinfectant wipes. Mary Washington Hospital has set up a donation dropoff area at its main entrance, at 2300 Fall Hill Avenue in Fredericksburg, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. A staff member will accept donations under the covered turnaround. Donations should be delivered in a plastic bag, like a grocery bag, or a box.

During Thursday's town hall, hospital officials described the treatments received by their coronavirus patients. The hospital system, for example, has looked at the effectiveness of the antiviral medicine remdesivir, Dr. Christopher Newman, chief operations officer and chief medical officer for Mary Washington Healthcare, said at the town hall.

The hospital system also is delaying putting some coronavirus patients on ventilators and is relying more on high-flow oxygen therapy, in which oxygen is delivered into the lungs of patients through the nose. The hope is that by keeping patients breathing on their own and able to move longer, doctors will be able to open up their lungs more than if they were sedated and on a ventilator.

Mary Washington Healthcare also is rotating patients from their back to the chest to increase the amount of oxygen that's getting in their lungs. "That helps the lungs arirate and oxyennate better over time," Newman said. "We have been doing that with some success here.”

Another potential treatment is the use of convalescent plasma where doctors take the plasma of someone who has recovered from COVID-19, which likely has antibodies. And when that plasma gets infused into a coronavirus patient who is critically ill, it could give them a boost of immunity to fight the infection, Newman said.

Hospital officials also addressed the issue of testing for the coronavirus and how it has evolved over the past month. Just in the last few days, testing has become more widely available within the Mary Washington Healthcare system.

The hospitals have multiple labs where it can send tests, with the turnaround time for results now anywhere between 24 and 72 hours as opposed to taking more than a week. The hospital system also can do in-house coronavirus testing, which takes only 45 minutes, for some of its patients.

During Thursday's town hall, Mary Washington Healthcare shared a brief video showing the two women who were severely ill with the coronavirus getting to leave the hospital to a loud ovation. One of the women was a patient who had been intubated — a breathing tube hooked up to a ventilator was inserted into her mouth — in the hospital's intensive care unit.

"For those two former COVID patients, they were crying and I would say there weren't too many dry eyes in the atrium because ... there was a time for each of those patients that they weren't sure. They were hugely uplifting to our staff," Eileen Dohmann, Mary Washington Healthcare’s chief nursing officer, said at the town hall.

RELATED:

• Field Hospital Set Up In Fredericksburg For Coronavirus Surge
• Coronavirus Cases In Fairfax County, Prince William Lead Virginia
• Stafford Drive Thru Coronavirus Testing Site Now Open