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Montgomery County officials examining morgue and hospital capacities as COVID-19 cases continue to surge

As of Thursday, Montgomery County coronavirus data showed 80% of the county’s hospital beds were occupied.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. — Health officials in Montgomery County said they are revisiting conversations they had in the spring, during the first surge of coronavirus cases, regarding hospital and morgue capacity.

The county’s top health officer Dr. Travis Gayles said conversations the county is having reflect the seriousness of the direction the pandemic is heading in.

“We've had to revisit conversations we had in the spring, for example, do we have adequate morgue space. In the spring, we had to order refrigerated trucks to be able to provide additional support to our hospitals,” Gayles said. “Based upon the numbers and the trends and how they move forward and looking at the hospital data, because as you've noticed in last week's press conference we said that we know the hospital data's kind of lagging behind the cases, that's no longer the case.”

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As of Thursday, 1,435 Marylanders were hospitalized with the coronavirus, according to the Maryland Health Department.

As of Thursday, 77% of Montgomery County’s hospital beds were occupied, according to Montgomery County COVID-19 Surveillance. County data also showed 16.9% of the community’s hospital beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients. 

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“We know that if we see any semblance of the numbers from the spring, whether it's related to hospital utilization, or COVID-related fatalities, we could potentially run out of space in our hospitals and our ability to be able to provide services to residents, as well as run out of space to take care of those individuals who've unfortunately passed away due to COVID.”

“If I'm sounding bleak or sounding concerned, it's because we are,” Gayles said. “And we certainly continue to be concerned as the county executive mentioned given the record number of folks that we're seeing traveling during this holiday season.”

Gayles said they are requesting folks limit interactions with people outside of their household, adding he doesn’t want to have a different conversation next week with even higher numbers of daily cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities.

“This isn't meant to scare you, it's meant to level set and share with you the reality of where we are in terms of devising our response and hopefully raising a keen sense of awareness in the community, to get that this is really serious,” Gayles said.

You can watch the full Montgomery County COVID-19 briefing HERE.

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