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The University of Vermont Medical Center has seen its number of coronavirus patients drop in half in a week, with 10 current patients compared to 20 last week.
The hospital has also significantly increased its in-house testing capacity, Stephen Leffler, the hospital’s president, said during an update with Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger. The hospital is now able to do 2,200 coronavirus tests a day, up from 118 a day when it started in-house testing last week.
“It’s a huge improvement, and it’s expanding by the day right now,” Leffler said. “We’re in really good shape right now in testing, which is going to help us as we move into the next stage of this work.”
None of the hospital’s current coronavirus patients is on a ventilator, and the hospital currently has an additional four patients “under investigation” for the disease, Leffler said.
Leffler said that it was clear that the state had bent the curve of the rate of the pandemic’s spread.
“This has come because of the really hard work and sacrifice of Vermonters who socially isolated, stayed home, did the right thing,” he said. “Without question, they have saved maybe hundreds of lives of their friends, neighbors, maybe their family members and themselves.”
Weinberger said that the data showed that efforts by Burlington residents to social distance were having their desired effects.
“This is the week where we can say definitively that new infections are dropping quite significantly, and you’re starting to see that in hospitalizations [at UVMMC],” Weinberger said.
Leffler said that the hospital is starting to think about how it can start to resume offering some services. He said that society would soon shift from a social isolation strategy to a suppression strategy, with widespread testing and efforts to “tamp down” any new surges.
That could last 12 to 18 months, Leffler said, until a vaccine is developed or herd immunity is built up.
“The best news is the strong social isolation/mitigation strategy has bought us some time to get ready to be prepared for when and if it flares back up, so at that time we can really work toward suppression of cases, and have overall less disruption on everyone’s daily lives,” he said.
However, Weinberger said that residents should expect to continue to take steps to limit the spread of the disease after Gov. Phil Scott’s stay at home order is lifted.
For example, people should be prepared to wear masks in public and wash their hands frequently, he said. Those who manage public spaces will have to frequently sanitize those spaces, he said.
“We’re going to need all of these non-medical … interventions to really be functioning at full speed if we are going to succeed in this suppression posture,” Weinberger said.
