1,500th Covid Patient Released; Peak Passed

Charles Moore Wednesday afternoon became the 1,500th Covid-19 patient discharged from Yale New Haven Hospital, as officials reported that Connecticut may now be eight days past the pandemic’s hospitalization peak.

Nurses, doctors, and aides streamed out of the building as Moore left the hospital’s 20 York St. doors to reunite with his sister, who was unable to visit him during his hospital stay.

The crowd of well-wishers swelled to over 100, filling the drive-through area and cheering and holding up signs.

Hours earlier, Yale New Haven Health officials and clinicians discussed the panedmic’s peak. They noted that intensive care is as stretched as before, and the public needs to keep social distancing and hand hygiene as the near and distant future remains so uncertain.

The update came midday during the regional health care system’s latest coronavirus-related virtual town hall, held online via the Zoom teleconferencing app and on Facebook Live.

Even if the state is past its peak, officials said, the sustained severity of illness for current patients, the inevitability of more new cases throughout the summer and fall, and the likelihood that a reliable vaccine is still at least a year away are significant causes for concern.

The digital press conference was the fifth such question-and-answer session that the hospital system has conducted since the novel coronavirus outbreak made landfall in Connecticut in mid-March. Click here, here, here, and here for stories about previous YNHH-hosted virtual town halls.

YNHH Chief Clinical Officer Thomas Balcezak (pictured) said Wednesday that the state has likely hit its peak in terms of coronavirus-positive patients in hospital beds at any given point in time.

He said that Connecticut hospitals had roughly 1,970 Covid-19 patients in hospital beds throughout the state on April 21. As of Wednesday, that number is down to roughly 1,600.

“We’re seeing this curve fall a little bit,” he said.

“We had been preparing for this since the end of February. We had been modelling what the number of cases would be, and we were very well prepared,” he said. ​“Our peak did not look anything like what it could have looked like had there not been social distancing and other measures put in place.”

With that said, Balcezak continued, the state, its residents, and its health care providers must continue to move cautiously in the weeks, and months, ahead. That means not immediately ​“opening up” the state’s economy and social life to pre-pandemic levels, and keeping in mind that the virus will continue to be a threat throughout the summer and the fall .. and really until there is a reliable vaccine.

“If we loosen those [social distancing mandates] up at this moment, we will then see our cases continue to climb,” he said.

“A vaccine, by anyone’s guess, is at least a year away,” he said. Guessing when exactly there will be an effective vaccine ​“is only speculation at this point.”

YNHH President and CEO Marna Borgstrom (pictured) said that she visited a Covid-19 intensive care unit (ICU) in Smilow Cancer Hospital on on Monday. ​“Every bed is full, and the staff are still fighting the battle,” she said.

“The way it feels on these patient care units right now is the way it felt last week and the week before,” even though the state may technically be past its hospitalization peak.

The Covid-19 patients in hospital beds are still ​“really, really sick right now”; staff are still stretched to near capacity providing the best care they can. She said walking through that unit reminded her why the public can’t let up on protective behaviors like wearing masks, staying home when possible, washing one’s hands frequently with soap and water, and keeping a six-foot social distance from others when out in public.

“This has been a very challenging illness to treat.”

Borgstrom and Balcezak both said that the hospital is currently trying to model what a second round of coronavirus infections, hospitalizations, and deaths might look like this fall. ​“We’re trying to figure out what that number is,” Borgstrom said. ​“We believe that we have got to prepare for that.

“This is going to be a new normal that will include taking care of patients with this virus” even during the summer, when community spread might be relatively low because more people are outside and in less dense gatherings.

Balcezak said people often ask him when hospitals like YNHH will resume normal operations. ​“I think there is no ​‘normal operations,’” he said. ​“We are entering a new world and a new phase and a new way of doing business. I think this will forever change us.”

Other updates included:

• The regional health care system has conducted upwards of 30,000 coronavirus tests since the start of the pandemic in Connecticut in mid-March, said Borgstrom and Balcezak. Borgstrom said that a little over 8,000 of those tests have come back positive.

Balcezak said that the state needs to get to a place where it is conducting roughly 30,000 coronavirus tests a day in order to most effectively identify where the virus is in the community, who needs medical care, who needs to quarantine, and who needs to isolate.

Borgstrom said that she has been in conversations with Yale University partners about ramping up testing in the New Haven region to roughly 10,000 a day.

• Borgstrom also said there are currently over 700 coronavirus-positive inpatients in beds throughout the regional health care system’s seven hospital campuses in Connecticut and Rhode Island. She said that number is down from a peak of roughly 850 last week.

YNHH Senior Vice President Vin Petrini told the Independent that Yale New Haven Hospital’s two local hospital campuses on York Street and Chapel Street currently have 424 Covid-positive inpatients, which is down by 18 from Tuesday.

One hundred five local patients are currently on ventilators. There have been a total of 136 local coronavirus-related fatalities at Yale New Haven Hospital. The regional health care system has discharged roughly 1,500 patients who have recovered well enough to return home or to a step-down rehabilitation facility.

• Borgstrom, Balcezak, Petrini, and Lawrence + Memorial and Westerly Hospitals President and CEO Patrick Green all urged residents who are experiencing symptoms associated with heart attacks and stroke to seek out treatment and not avoid the emergency department out of a fear of contracting Covid-19.

“If you have symptoms, if you need care, reach out to your providers. Our emergency departments are open. Our folks are seeing patients,” Balcezak said.

• Borgstrom also reiterated how much of a financial hit YNHH in particular and hospitals across the country more broadly are taking during this pandemic because of the postponement of elective procedures in order to make staff and beds and other resources available for Covid-19 patients.

“The losses that are being experienced in hospital-based healthcare are staggering,” she said. ​“Ours is no exception.”

YNHH’s Covid-19 Stats

YNHH spokesperson Mark D’Antonio sent out a press release email Wednesday afternoon with the following coronavirus-related statistics regarding everything from the number of cleaned and reprocessed N95 masks to community phone calls answered.

• As of today, our COVID Call Center 833-ASK-YNHH, established on March 9, has answered more than 70,000 calls from the community and our staff.

• More than 1.2 million pieces of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) have been donated by members of the community. Among those were 7500 handmade masks and 76,000 N95 respirators.

• 11,700 N95 masks have been safely cleaned and reprocessed to be able to use again.

• Thanks to the support of state licensing boards, YNHHS has credentialed nearly 800 new medical staff members to support our staff in caring for COVID-19 patients.

• A total of 1500 COVID-19 positive patients have been discharged.

• 85 COVID clinical trials are underway at YNHHS and Yale.

• More than 47,000 meals have been either donated or promised to hospitals around our health system from local restaurants and community organizations.

• More than 51,000 outpatient telehealth visits have been conducted between Yale New Haven Health physicians and patients.

• In testing sites at all our hospitals, we have swabbed more than 28,000 people to test for COVID-19

• YNHHS launched a Kudoboard on April 1 to encourage the community to post positive messages of support for our staff. Since then, we have received 1206 notes of thanks and encouragement. The website can be found here: www.ynhhs.org/kudos.

Sam Gurwitt contributed to this story.