The number of patients being admitted for COVID-19 at St. Joseph’s Hospital seems to reflect the larger drop in hospitalizations across the county. Nurse Pearl Lavalette is St. Joe's infection prevention and control manager.
She says like other hospitals, they had to be very flexible very fast, and staff was able to accommodate those coming in to the ER and urgent care.
"We did see, I think in line with everyone else in the community, quite a few patients at the onset of this hitting our area. But in the past week, I'd say we leveled out quite a bit, if not even started to decrease the number of patients we're seeing and having to admit to the hospital."
She says early on, like everyone else, testing was more limited due to high demand, and, in turn, affected turnaround times. Now, she says, as demand has leveled off, supplies have caught up. But Lavalette says they still can’t test everyone, which is seen as a way to truly get a more accurate reading of the disease in the community.
"We're not at a point yet where we can safely test any asymptomatic person that walks through the door. We are still limiting the majority of testing to folks who are symptomatic because we want to make sure the testing remains available for those people. But there are certain instances where we've been asked to, and we've been happy to help, such as with the county executive's [plan to] test nursing home staff."
Onondaga County has set up a remote testing center in the East Syracuse Walmart parking lot for nursing home staff. The county is working with Nascentia Health to test residents in independent and assisted living facilities. Lavalette says turnaround times are as little as two hours with Laboratory Alliance in Liverpool, to 48 hours at the state lab in Albany. She says they’ve had no reports of lost or contaminated tests.
