County will expand testing capacity, ensure care to hospital patients

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As COVID-19 cases continue to spike in Onondaga County and across New York state, county officials and local hospitals have begun taking steps to ensure the health care system can keep up. 

As of Monday, County Executive Ryan McMahon reported 74 hospitalizations within the county and six patients in critical condition. The county also reported 153 new cases Tuesday. 

Dr. Robert Corona, CEO of Upstate University Hospitals, said that the hospital’s biggest concern with the rise in cases is that hospital staff will become overwhelmed. At the beginning of the pandemic, staff anticipated that it would only last a few months and they could push through. 

“They’ve really been through a long haul, and they’re exhausted, they miss their families,” Corona said. “It really is stretching the emotional and physical capacity of our staff.”

In March, when hospitals cut back on elective surgeries, Upstate was able to shift staff members that were no longer working to help with other hospital operations. Now that the hospital is operating at its full capacity, the workload has become more demanding for its employees, Corona said. 

At the same time, county hospitals are discharging coronavirus patients faster than they were at the beginning of the pandemic, McMahon said at a press briefing Monday.

“What we’re seeing now is more people come in (to hospitals) but we’re seeing discharges happen sooner,” McMahon said.

A lot of Upstate’s capacity issues from the beginning of the pandemic stemmed from New York state’s mandate that hospitals must have about 30% capacity to continue elective surgeries, he said. While Upstate continues to manage as many COVID-19 patients as it did in the spring, the hospital is also able to continue its other operations.

Upstate has since partnered with other local hospitals to trade patients so that each patient can get the proper care, Corona said.

“We take their sickest patients, and, in return, they take the lower acuity patients at their facility,” he said. “We provide them with a lot of the higher level services they need, expertise in infectious disease, critical care, trauma.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo designated parts of Onondaga County, including the city of Syracuse, precautionary “yellow zones” as part of New York state’s microcluster watch list on Nov. 9. This order requires schools to mandate stricter testing protocols and limits seating at restaurants to four people per table.

McMahon said that the number of active cases in the county — 1,328 as of Tuesday — is likely similar to the number of cases the county had in March, though officials didn’t realize it at the time.

“In the beginning of the pandemic we probably had as many cases if not more, we just didn’t know about them,” McMahon said. “When you find them, there’s a lot of work that goes into each case.”

The county will also continue to expand its testing capacities, McMahon said. Onondaga County now has the capacity to conduct up to 450 rapid tests on asymptomatic individuals each week. The county tends to see the number of new cases decrease toward the beginning of the week since its testing capacity is not as high on the weekends.

Upstate continues to assist the county in expanding its testing, Corona said. The hospital processes about 1,000 tests daily, including tests from all SUNY schools, local K-12 schools and essential workers within the county, Corona said.

The hospital also processes tests from Syracuse University students.

As a result of increasing cases, the county will no longer provide regular updates of potential public exposures, but instead will notify close contacts and the public of potential large clusters, McMahon has said.

As cases in Onondaga County decreased following the initial outbreak in March, Upstate moved into its “resilience phase,” Corona said. Now, the hospital has adopted a similar color-coding system to New York state and is currently operating at a “yellow” level.

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“The same team gets together in a safety call in the morning and we review the status of the hospital,” Corona said. “We really haven’t missed a beat.”

Upstate also continues to plan for the distribution of a possible coronavirus vaccine. The hospital’s chief of infectious disease is a principal investigator in the Pfizer vaccine, which has shown 90% effectiveness rates in trials. Corona expects that the hospital will play a role in the vaccine’s distribution since it has the proper facilities to store it.

“We have the freezers that can maintain the vaccine at the levels it needs to be maintained,” Corona said. “We’ll be key to the implementation of the roll-out of the vaccine.”

Still, until a vaccine is available, the staff at Upstate will continue to persist to care for patients and monitor the spread of the virus, he said.

Corona noted that Upstate currently has enough personal protective equipment and supplies to handle the volume of patients, though if case numbers continue to rise, the hospital could face problems, he said.

“Right now we’re able to keep our head above water but if it gets any more significant with the numbers it may push us over the edge,” Corona said.