Centra Health officials are calling it an increasingly grim situation: Lynchburg General Hospital has 70 COVID patients up from 45 a week and a half ago, with 14 of them in the ICU. Fewer than 10% of those were vaccinated. Centra officials say they’ve had to cancel some elective surgeries to handle the increase, and they had a night recently with 137 people in the emergency room.
Centra Medical Director Dr. Christopher Lewis:
As far as pediatric cases, Centra officials say a 13 and 19 year old were hospitalized at one time but they recovered. Officials expect they might soon have to take care of pediatric Covid patients.
Meanwhile, last week Centra said it would require its employees to be vaccinated or face termination. Centra VP Michael Elliott was asked about the response to that mandate:
Elliott_ mandate response :26
Elliott says Centra will start in-house vaccine clinics next week to try to boost the vaccination rate among employees.