By Ben Wolford and Lyndsey Brennan
At the height of the pandemic, UH Portage Medical Center had to reconfigure its morgue to accommodate the surge of Covid-19 victims. And they feared there would be more.
“There were times during the pandemic that we ran out of morgue space,” UH Portage President William Benoit said. “We rented a refrigerator truck that was parked at the back of the hospital for the bodies.”
Today in Portage County, there are no longer any health orders on masks or gatherings. The local emergency management office shut down its Covid response over a month ago. Vaccines are widely available. And the number of new Covid cases in Portage County has reduced to a trickle.
With this pandemic waning, county leaders are now taking stock of the response. They praised frontline healthcare providers for serving patients despite grave risks. And they commended the community for largely stepping up in times of acute need, such as when local groups came together to manufacture cloth masks for local institutions.
They also said collaboration among local agencies was exceptional.
“One thing we do well in Portage County is a lot of disaster planning before an incident occurs,” said Ryan Shackelford, the county’s emergency management director. “So we had a lot of good structure in place. We had a lot of good emergency plans. I think everybody knew each other’s roles and responsibilities once the incident had taken off.”
But at various points, the pandemic tested everyone. The mobile morgue was just one example, which Benoit revealed this week at a Kent Rotary Club talk. While they never actually used the truck, there were moments when Benoit feared the number of new patients could overwhelm the hospital’s ability to properly care for them all.
He credits community prevention efforts for slowing the contagion and avoiding the worst outcomes.
UH Portage also underwent some emergency remodeling, with work crews knocking down walls and creating new air flows to pump contaminated air outside. Rooms that housed Covid patients needed to be “negative pressure,” meaning the ventilation system continually sucks air out of the room rather than letting it spread to other rooms.
“We have areas in the hospital that are negative pressure today that were not negative pressure at the start of the pandemic,” Benoit said. “Sledgehammers were swung.”
As of now, 216 people in Portage County died because of Covid-19, and over 13,000 residents have received positive Covid test results. The worst month was December, when the University Hospitals system was taking in upwards of an estimated 50 new Covid patients per day on top of its normal admissions, according to hospital figures.
Strict visitation protocols, the stress of isolation and a spike in mental health crises contributed to a tense atmosphere at times, and the number of assaults on nurses increased, Benoit said. In one incident, a visitor was prohibited from seeing a relative and broke through a locked glass door.
Despite all the uncertainty and fear, he said morale was “relatively high.”
“Everyone just sort of dug in,” Benoit said. “We take care of patients every day. And so that’s what we did.”
Meanwhile, the Portage County Health District was working to contain the spread of Covid by tracing the contacts of thousands of positive individuals. They brought on 14 temporary contractors to help supplement the employees already contact tracing, and they still struggled to keep up.
They also coordinated mass testing and public information campaigns at schools and nursing homes. They even fielded complaints from residents concerned about stay-at-home orders. All the while, the health department was laying the logistical groundwork to distribute thousands of vaccines as quickly as possible.
“The vaccination campaign was our hope,” said Becky Lehman, public information officer at the health department.
At least 43% of Portage County residents are now fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by The New York Times. Benoit said about 70% of UH Portage employees are vaccinated.
Resurgences of Covid-19 are “very much still a concern,” he said, because of the rising number of variants, some of which may be more resistant to vaccines.
“I think the books that are written five years from now, about everything, are going to be very interesting reads as we process through it all,” Benoit said. “If anything, we’re going to be better prepared for the next pandemic or mass casualty incident or anything else that happens. It’s certainly a learning experience. And we’re trying to leverage that learning experience to be even more prepared for the next one.”
Correction: Because of an editor’s error, this article previously reported that UH Portage was admitting over 50 new Covid patients per day during the peak of the pandemic. In fact, UH Portage only admitted a handful of Covid patients at any time, and the estimated 50 new patients referred to system-wide admissions.
Ben Wolford is the editor and publisher of The Portager.
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