A healthcare worker stands by at a COVID-19 temporary testing site at Abington Hospital in Abington, Pa., Wednesday, March 18, 2020. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms. For some it can cause more severe illness. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
A healthcare worker stands by at a COVID-19 temporary testing site at Abington Hospital in Abington, Pa., Wednesday, March 18, 2020. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms. For some it can cause more severe illness. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
(Harrisburg) — Pennsylvania has begun working to boost the number of hospital beds and organize “strike teams” of extra healthcare workers for hospitals and nursing homes struggling with surging COVID-19-related caseloads and staffing shortages, Gov. Tom Wolf’s office said Friday.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health and Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency are coordinating the undertaking after getting requests for help, Wolf’s office said.
The plans involve adding hospital beds within regions for 60 days to absorb patients from swamped hospitals. Additional medical support staff are to include physicians, respiratory therapists and registered nurses, Wolf’s office said.
Other staff will be sent directly to hospitals in need over the next three months. Certain nursing homes also will get additional beds, registered nurses and aides to allow hospitals in the area to more quickly discharge patients in need of long-term rehab or care.
Wolf’s office gave no timelines as to when hospitals can expect the help.
The move comes after three federal “strike teams” went to Scranton Regional Hospital and WellSpan York in recent days to open 30 hospital beds for a month.
Dr. Tony Aquilina, the chief physician executive at WellSpan Health, which operates the York hospital, said 40% of the system’s 1,200 are there because of COVID-19.
“To have 40% of your hospitalizations due to COVID-19 is an enormous, enormous burden,” Aquilina said in a virtual news conference Thursday.
Hospitals and nursing homes statewide have been sounding the alarm in recent weeks as largely unvaccinated COVID-19 patients fill hospital beds.
That has sent some acute-care facilities over capacity, jammed some emergency rooms and forced nursing homes to stop accepting new residents.
Pennsylvania is reporting an average of more than 21,000 new, confirmed infections per day over the past week, up four times since the last week of November.
The number of COVID-19-positive patients in the hospital has doubled since mid-November, now at an average of more than 5,300 per day for the past two weeks and still rising quickly.
Still, the one-day total of COVID-19-positive patients in Pennsylvania’s hospitals — more than 6,600, according to state data — is higher than at any other time during the pandemic, the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania said.
“This surge comes during the most severe health care staffing shortage in recent memory,” the association’s president and CEO Andy Carter said in a statement.
In addition to the staffing shortage, the association attributed the strain to rising COVID-19 cases, the flu and other seasonal illnesses and an influx of patients requiring more intensive care due to care being delayed earlier in the pandemic.
As of Monday, just over one-third of Pennsylvania’s hospitals were at 90% capacity or higher for staffed inpatient beds, and almost one in 10 were at 100% capacity or higher, the association said.
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