GAINESVILLE, Ga. — "We are very full in our hospital beds and our critical care beds," said Dr. John Delzell, Vice President of Northeast Georgia Health System (NGHS).
For the second time in seven months, the Gainesville-based hospital group has been forced to add another facility to house hospital beds for critical care patients.
"Today, we had 221 in the hospital," said Delzell. "We're running really close to in between 95 and 98 percent capacity all the time now, at all of our locations."
Those numbers include COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients, but most are being treated for the coronavirus.
"During the first wave, we really spent a lot of time expanding our critical care capacity. We opened up a couple of new ICU areas in our hospitals," said Delzell.
Early next week, NGHS said they are preparing to open a wing at Laurelwood Mental Health Facility in Gainesville, giving them at least another 20 beds.
With the anticipation of more beds, comes more strain on already-exhausted medical professionals.
"We've been struggling, particularly as people got sick," Delzell said. "That has made it more of a challenge; because our staff gets sick too, so, then that just makes it more of a challenge."
Delzell says people's individual choices for the holidays could make things better or worse.
"We really want people to think about gatherings. Don't go to holiday parties, that's a disaster waiting to happen really in our area," Delzell said. "We're already at capacity, so if people start to have Christmas parties or New Year's parties, that could really make things worse."
Gainesville isn't the only place where hospitals are near capacity.
Georgia has 14 hospital regions and right now six of them are stretched to the point of needing to look for other places to house patients.