ODESSA, Texas — As of July 1, there have now been over 1,000 recorded cases of COVID-19 in Ector County.
This includes over 600 currently active cases as well. In response, both Medical Center Hospital and Odessa Regional Medical Center are opening new areas in each hospital to house COVID-19 patients.
For MCH, the new COVID floor could be here to stay.
"This is probably for the foreseeable future. We’ve seen just a rise in cases a lot of the past few weeks and not one day going down. So I would imagine this is for the foreseeable future. You know hopefully one day, hopefully in the near future, we can say hey we don’t need this floor anymore," said Trevor Tankersley, MCH Director of Public Relations.
This new COVID floor is going to be designed for general COVID-19 patients, not those in critical care.
"We have 20 critical care beds. I think we have 10 critical care patients in house so we're at 50% capacity there for COVID, but this is just for the general COVID patients who don’t need that critical care, but obviously are still sick enough and have symptoms enough to be hospitalized," Tankersley said.
ORMC plans to open their new COVID unit on July 6. Dr. Rohith Saravanan, the hospital's Chief Medical Officer, said they had prepared for a potential surge in cases with this second COVID unit. They hadn't opened it yet because he said that certain thresholds had to be met.
"We have thresholds kind of set up. We said okay when we hit two to three COVID patients, we’re gonna open up the COVID unit with the 15 beds. Then we had another threshold that said when we had 13 in the COVID unit, we’re gonna open up the next unit. So it’s a permanent open unless the case counts decline," Dr. Saravanan said.
At MCH, certain elective surgeries will once again be put on hold in order to deal with the increase in COVID patients. This includes any elective surgery that requires an overnight stay because MCH said they need as many hospital beds open as possible.
Trevor also says the rise in cases is a scary situation for everyone and needs to be taken seriously.
"We’re at that point now where we’re having to expand capacity and that’s a very scary situation for our community. We want to be able to accommodate all these patients that we're seeing, but please mask up if you’re going out. It can really help reduce the spread of the coronavirus," Tankersley said.
Dr. Saravanan echoed those sentiments. He said that there needs to be a community effort to help stop the spread of COVID-19. He said that people need to wear masks so that fewer people will get sick and the expected surge can be prevented.
MORE FROM NEWSWEST 9: