MARSHALL COUNTY, W.Va. (WTRF) — Where big cities might have been seeing the pandemic’s ugly head from the start, doctors and nurses at rural hospitals have been on standby for this very season… with the virus only now striking the Ohio Valley like it never has before. 
 

Running a marathon and then having to sprint…

 Covid beds are full and they’re always kept full while as before it was not always as extreme numbers as they are, but they are absolutely filled right now. 

Pattie Kimpel, Infection Control Coordinator with WVU Medicine Reynolds Memorial Hospital

With Marshall County in red, even staff are coming down with the virus, and the hospital is quickly finding; you can’t just replace a nurse. Fatigued staff are rotating on long hours, as the virus sweeps through the area. 

 We are now in the height of the pandemic. We are experiencing it. We have staff that are off and each day I’m able to take a couple more staff out of quarantine and then they return. And then there might be more staff that get COVID. So, we are day by day watching this but it is actually here. What we’ve been preparing for, and the height of it is here right now. 

Pattie Kimpel, Infection Control Coordinator with WVU Medicine Reynolds Memorial Hospital

Reynolds has been calling other hospitals as a lifeline… asking for more hands to man the jobs left open where staff have been pulled to work on the COVID-19 floor.

All 16 beds in the COVID-19 ward are full, but beds from other departments are on standby… if the bed isn’t filled with another patient. 

Patients might have to stay in the Emergency Room a bit longer before they get a room on the floor. And, your COVID patients are maybe here a little bit longer than a traditional patient with a couple day stay.

Pattie Kimpel, Infection Control Coordinator with WVU Medicine Reynolds Memorial Hospital