At L+M, all's pretty quiet on the COVID-19 front
New London — With COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and rates of infection at high levels in other parts of the country, the coronavirus disease remains under control in southeastern Connecticut.
A projected mid-June peak in cases in the area served by Lawrence + Memorial Hospital never materialized. The state’s phased easing of restrictions on businesses, the casinos’ partial reopenings and Black Lives Matter protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis have not sparked a significant increase in cases.
More recently, warm-weather gatherings and the Fourth of July have had public health officials on edge. But so far, so good.
“Our area and the whole state have done a great job following the guidelines,” Patrick Green, L+M’s president and chief executive officer, said in a recent interview. “We have not had any positive patients in a couple of weeks. People have been doing all the right things — social distancing, wearing masks. ... The success we’re seeing is due to our population staying home and not trying to rush back into everything.”
The numbers tell the story.
On May 6, L+M was treating 31 COVID-19 patients. Seven weeks later, on June 24, it had none. With few exceptions, it has been free of inpatients with the disease every day since, including Thursday.
The decline in COVID-19 admissions at L+M parallels the falling statewide numbers reported almost daily by Gov. Ned Lamont’s office and weekly by Ledge Light Heath District, which serves as the local health department for nine towns in the region: East Lyme, Groton, Ledyard, Lyme, New London, North Stonington, Old Lyme, Stonington and Waterford.
Lamont’s office reported Thursday that 1,352 COVID-19 cases — both those confirmed by laboratory tests and those considered "probable" because of the patient’s symptoms — had been detected in New London County since the early March outbreak of the disease. Since July 15, only 13 new cases had been detected.
According to the state, 102 New London County deaths had been associated with the disease, a toll unchanged since June 23.
In its latest report, issued last Friday, Ledge Light indicated it had confirmed a total of 879 COVID-19 cases, including 17 in the week that ended July 17. That followed a week in which cases had climbed by 43, the highest one-week total since late May. The number of new cases had reached a low of 16 in the week that ended June 12.
Ledge Light reported 98 deaths associated with COVID-19, a toll that hasn’t changed since the week ending June 19; 88% of the deaths were concentrated in three towns: East Lyme, 33; Groton, 25, and Waterford, 28.
Amid the relative calm, L+M has been transitioning back to pre-COVID-19 levels of service, according to Green.
“Earlier, we had to decrease our elective surgeries, our imaging and that was difficult,” he said. “We started to bring them back in mid-June but we wanted to do it slow. In the last few weeks, we’ve gotten back to 75 to 80% of where we were in terms of surgeries and to 60 to 65% in radiology.”
He said the hospital’s emergency room traffic has returned to near normal and that L+M’s visitation policy has been eased. Patients now are being allowed one visitor at a time. At the pandemic’s height, no visitors were allowed except in cases involving extenuating circumstances.
L+M’s Pequot Health Center in Groton has re-emerged as a convenient option for patients needing outpatient surgery, suggesting it can be better utilized in the future, Green said.
Green said the hospital staff remains vigilant and mindful of what’s going on elsewhere. He said he is fully supportive of the governor’s travel advisory, which requires travelers arriving in Connecticut from states where COVID-19 cases are surging to self-quarantine.
“We’re not taking anything off the table,” he said. “Until we get a vaccine, we’re not going to relax any of our precautions.”
Seventeen L+M employees have tested positive for COVID-19, giving the staff one of the lowest rates of infection in the Yale New Haven Health System, according to a hospital spokeswoman, Fiona Phelan. The system, of which L+M and Westerly hospitals are members, has a 0.22% infection rate among staff.
L+M’s drive-thru COVID-19 testing site, which opened in mid-March, continues to collect more than 130 specimens per day, on average, Phelan said, while Westerly Hospital’s drive-thru collects nearly 50 specimens a day.
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