Montco reports 5 more deaths
EAGLEVILLE » Montgomery County officials reported five more COVID-19 deaths on Monday, bringing the county’s death toll to 27, and revealed that about 250 people are currently in county hospitals suffering from the disease, many on ventilators.
The latest COVID-19 victims included three Lower Moreland residents, an 80-year-old man, a 78-year-old man and a 61-year-old woman, and two Lower Merion residents, an 84-year-old man and an 87-year-old woman.
Four of the individuals passed away while in a hospital and all had underlying medical conditions and one died at home, according to county Commissioners’ Chairwoman Dr. Valerie Arkoosh.
Officials said there were 145 new positive cases of the virus reported since Sunday, bringing the county’s total number of cases to 1,134 since March 7.
The new cases included residents from 43 municipalities, two of which reported their first cases — East Greenville and Green Lane. To date, 59 of the county’s 62 municipalities have reported coronavirus cases.
The new cases in the county included at least 72 men and 65 women whose ages ranged from 9 to 110. Three of the individuals are hospitalized, officials said.
“We believe that we have approximately 250 individuals that are currently hospitalized with a diagnosis of COVID-19 here in a Montgomery County hospital of which approximately 70 patients require a ventilator for their care,” said Arkoosh, who was joined
at the Monday news briefing by fellow commissioners Kenneth E. Lawrence Jr. and Joseph C. Gale, and Dr. Alvin Wang, regional EMS medical director, and Dr. Brenda Weis, administrator of the Office of Public Health.
“Our most recent data is that every hospital in Montgomery County does still have vacant beds,” Arkoosh added.
While officials don’t have the capability to track the number of cases of people who have recovered from the disease, Arkoosh did point out that one of the first individuals to contract the disease in the county spent 17 days on a ventilator and has now recovered and is back at home.
“That just gives you some sense of the time period that can go by from when a person is first diagnosed, goes in the hospital for treatment and then ultimately comes home,” Arkoosh said.
As the number of positive cases does increase, county officials said they’re awaiting finalization of plans for a Southeastern Pennsylvania Specialized Medical Assistance and Response Team (SMART) for the region, which will help ensure the county can get through the epidemic with enough
hospital beds.
“The final deployment plan is still being worked on so I cannot announce a location yet,” said Arkoosh. “But it’s on its way and we will be grateful to have it here in the county.”
The specialized team is expected to include about 500 volunteer and support providers. Officials previously said the site is likely going to be at an existing facility and also could include a tent.
While providing surge capacity, the site will be capable of caring for approximately 50 patients with some ability to provide critical care for patients that might need that care.
Such emergency teams respond to community needs caused by disasters in order to increase surge capacity of a hospital or to provide a temporary community-based alternate care site. Requests for such teams are made by county offices of emergency management.
The county’s communitybased COVID-19 testing site at Temple University’s Ambler Campus in Upper Dublin, also continues to be available. Officials said 3,940 people were tested at the site through April 5.
Fifty-seven percent of the test results have been returned and revealed that about 21 percent of the individuals tested positive, according to officials.
“We’ve been talking about that we felt that the beginning of the surge was coming, that we are anticipating that we will peak sometime maybe next week. The fact that we are seeing more positive cases is consistent with what we’ve been expecting and what we had been planning for,”
Arkoosh said.
The site will provide testing by appointment only. There will not be any treatment conducted at the site.
“We do believe that we have enough supplies to get us through this Friday, April 10,” said Arkoosh, explaining the site will be discontinued on Friday. “We are extremely grateful for the resources that we received at this site during this time.”
The link to register for a test appointment is available at www.montcopa.org/ COVID-19 as well as at the county’s official social media accounts, officials said.
Individuals who do not have access to the Internet or do not have an email address can call 610-631-3000 at 8 a.m. daily to register for a testing appointment that day.