BERLIN, Md. - Hospitals are reaching their limit as the pandemic continues. For Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin that limit was Monday night when they issued a yellow alert, diverting ambulances away from their emergency room. The alert was lifted at 10 pm after five hours. Vice President of Medical Affairs Sally Dowling says it's the first yellow alert for the hospital in almost 20 years.
“Our emergency room was basically full and didn't have the room or the capability to take on anymore urgently ill patients,” Dowling said.
Dowling says COVID played a significant role in bringing the hospital to near capacity. Close to half the patients in AGH are covid patients. Calvin Pinto of Berlin says he is concerned about his loved ones if near capacity is reached again.
“It's kind of crazy to think about but I am sure they have a lot going on, a lot of people with COVID in there and everything going on but its also concerning if like my grandmother were to need to go to the hospital or something that we would need to drive to Salisbury and if it were life threatening we would need to go to Salisbury,” Pinto said.
The hospital also stopped most non-emergency elective surgeries yesterday to allocate more resources to help urgently ill patients. Dowling says many hospitals also have long waits.
“But basically at any hospital right now a patient is going to wait longer than they want to and longer than we would want them too but we are just providing the good level of care to everyone as we are able to do so,” Dowling said.
The hospital remains on red alert since there are no EKG telemetry beds available. Another point Dowling made was that in this current wave, more staff are getting infected with COVID than in previous waves.
