Updated at 3:05 p.m.
Vermont’s second-largest hospital reopened its coronavirus unit late last week to accommodate a growing number of Covid-19 patients. The unit is already full, a Rutland Regional Medical Center official said Tuesday.
“Covid is still very much in our community,” Dr. Rick Hildebrant, the hospital’s chief medical information officer, said in a press release. “We remain nimble and prepared to meet the needs of our community as Covid ebbs and flows during the pandemic.”
The increase in Covid hospitalizations comes days after the Scott administration announced it was rolling back its daily Covid reports into one weekly summary, ending day-by-day reports on case counts.
The new report would track Covid hospital admissions, but it won’t disclose daily hospitalizations and ICU data.
State Health Commissioner Mark Levine said on Tuesday that Rutland is the only hospital in the state to experience a rise in Covid hospitalizations, while others have seen a “stabilization.”
“I haven’t talked to Rutland as of late to understand exactly what they’ve done,” Levine said at Gov. Phil Scott’s weekly press conference. “No other hospitals were really at that pivot.”
The Rutland unit closed in January, according to hospital spokesperson Gerianne Smart, but a recent steady increase in Covid hospitalizations pushed the hospital to resurrect the special unit. The unit, dubbed 5 West, is normally a general hospital ward, Smart said. The unit has space for 10 patients but only enough staff for eight of those beds, she added. As of Tuesday, all eight beds were full.
The Covid unit is closed to visitors, according to the press release, but the hospital’s general visitation policies remain unchanged.
As of Monday, according to the state Department of Health, Vermont’s hospitals had a total of 67 Covid patients, including six in the ICU.
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Clarification: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story overstated the increase in Covid-19 hospitalizations at Rutland Regional Medical Center.