Ulster County more than doubles its ventilators; adds ICU beds

Earlier this week, County Executive Pat Ryan warned that the county was on pace to exhaust its ICU beds and ventilators by week’s end. Today in a virtual town hall, he said the county has been able to add enough of both to get it through at least this week. He credited HealthAlliance, which owns Kingston Hospital, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

He presented the information below. We added the change in purple from Tuesday’s numbers next to the numbers presented today.

When speaking of ICU beds, Ryan referred to them, as he did Tuesday, as “fully staffed” ICU beds. We asked if that meant that staff, rather than equipment, was holding the county back from increasing ICU capacity. He said it was, and that the county is working with HealthAlliance and Nuvance to address the issue.

Ryan said the projected case growth over the next 10 days is being revised down. A slide on Tuesday assumed cases would double every five days, which would put the county at 800 cases on April 12 and 1600 cases on April 17. New projections show a slower rate of increase.

He presented three different curves, with the most likely course reaching 1,346 cases by April 18.

In other Ulster County COVID-19 related news:

• Ryan reported that 55 of a planned 100 hospital beds have been set up at the Kate Walton Field House at Kingston High School. (More on that plan)
• Project Resilience, the county service program for residents affected by the COVID-19 shutdown and administered through United Way, has delivered 22,571 meals. Over 2,100 households have requested assistance, 16 local teams have been established to distribute meals, and 160 restaurants have signed up.
• The county, through a partnership with IBM, launched an interactive chat tool to field residents’ COVID-19 questions and point them toward resources. (More info here.)
• Ryan said the county has received complaints about persons violating the NY PAUSE rules on social distancing; that is, non-essential businesses operating or “non-essential gatherings of any size for any reason.” He said residents can report violations on the county’s website or by calling 1-833-789-0470.
• The county currently has 504 positive cases and 8 deaths.

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