More COVID-19 patients hospitalized at East Georgia Regional Medical Center required the use of a ventilator on Monday than any single day reported previously.
In his daily report, Bulloch Public Safety/Emergency Management Agency Director Ted Wynn said 24 patients are on ventilators among the 62 COVID patients in the hospital on Monday. The previous daily high was 21 on Sept. 6 and repeated on Sunday.
A ventilator mechanically helps pump oxygen into the body. The air flows through a tube that goes in the mouth and down the windpipe. Also, a ventilator may be set to take a certain number of breaths for a patient per minute.
Stephen Pennington, CEO for East Georgia Regional said Friday, “ICU beds continue to be at capacity at EGRMC, as is the case for our entire region,” he said. “We anticipate the demand for ICU beds to continue to be a challenge through at least the rest of September.”
After hitting a high of 73 COVID patients hospitalized at EGRMC on Aug. 26, the number dipped to 54 last Thursday, but was back up to 62 on Monday. Hospitalizations across Georgia hit an all-time high of 6,485 on Sept. 7, and had dropped by 600 cases in Monday’s report from the Georgia Department of Public Health to 5,885.
The Department of Health reported 52 new confirmed cases of COVID in Bulloch since Friday, which continues a local trend of declining case numbers that began about 10 days ago. Bulloch, however, did record another probable death due to COVID – the seventh probable death since last Monday. (The Department of Health defines a probable death as a patient who receives a positive Antigen/rapid test for COVID-19, developed symptoms and then died.)
Bulloch now has recorded 7,670 total COVID cases, which have resulted in 79 confirmed deaths and 69 probable deaths.
GS, school cases
New cases reported at Georgia Southern University and in Bulloch County Schools dropped significantly for the third consecutive week.
Confirmed and self-reported cases at Georgia Southern have fallen from 434 across its three campuses the week of Aug. 16-22, to 72 for the most recent week – Sept. 6-12. Of the total number, 52 were on the Statesboro campus, compared to 86 the previous week, 230 the week before that and 389 for Aug. 16-22.
At the same time, reported cases at Bulloch County schools have dropped from 474 for the week of Aug. 15-21 to 34 for Sept. 5-11. Statesboro High has seen new cases fall from 121 for Aug. 15-21 to 5 last week. Similarly, Southeast Bulloch High has seen a decline from 73 to 5 cases for the same time frames.
National cases
New cases around the U.S. are now averaging about 146,000 per day, according to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, which is down from the high of 164,000 per day on Sept. 3. Average deaths per day, however, are up to an average of 1,648, compared to 1,560 deaths per day due to COVID a week ago.