A Tidbit of Good News Locally in the Fight Against Coronavirus? Yes! 86% of Area Hospital Ventilators Available

As of yesterday afternoon's Escambia County Emergency Operations Center SITREP--Escambia County's 3 Hospitals report 86% of total ventilators are open, available for patient use.

In the midst of all the gloom and doom over the Chinese Coronavirus/ COVID-19  Pandemic and the devastating impacts we as a nation are enduring because of this virus----there is a tiny bright spot of hope locally in Escambia County that is worth reporting.

Under the ESF 8 section of yesterday afternoon's Escambia County EOC's Daily COVID-19 SITREP, a telling statistic was added.  

Ventilators.

How many ventilators do we have locally total, and how many are currently utilized. Taking these two numbers together we can work out the percentage of the total that are currently free in real time.

Right now that percentage stands at 86% available and ready for use if necessary by patients

This is actually up three percentage points from earlier this week when I reported this stat on this blog.

I asked this 15 days ago at our meeting in mid-march, and I have been asking ever since. 

I've been asking county admin to acquire this data from the hospitals daily and to add this information to our SITREP daily in real time.  I also asked about the number of Hospital beds total we have locally because this is another  I think this needs to be put out daily to reassure the population locally that we are not experiencing the shortages like other areas are, namely New York, Michigan, California, and New Orleans.

Both of these metrics are now officially in our SITREP that goes out daily.

And we do need to watch it daily, this percentage.  It will be our trip wire, early warning system, canary in the coalmine.  It will tell us if we are going to experience a situation like these other areas are dealing with currently.

The other thing to be mindful of:  In New York for example, the Governor there is having the National Guard forcefully take ventilators from that state's other communities that do not have large virus outbreaks so that these units can be transferred to New York City, where there is a desperate need for more ventilators.  Could that happen here?  Could our available ventilators be requisitioned for Miami and other areas of S. Florida where they are having a bigger problem that we are having here?  Because, what if that happens and then our cases expand to the point that the ventilators remaining are inadequate for our citizens?  Then what?

Right now it is simply a hypothetical.  Thankfully.

We all need to watch this closely!

Per last night's SITREP

We have a total of 204 Ventilators between the three major Hospitals in Escambia County. (reduced from 227 previously reported due to the erroneous counting of neonatal ventilators by one of our hospitals).

176 Ventilators are open and available.  176 divided by 204 indicates a ventilator figure,  open and available locally,  of 86%

Locally we have 1334 Hospital Beds and the number occupied is 737, leaving a total of 597 available, as of yesterday's SITREP

This equates to about 45% of local hospital beds available at the moment.