The following news release was published by Hunt Regional Healthcare on Aug. 24. Hunt Regional Healthcare operates Hunt Regional Medical Center, the hospital in Greenville, as well as the emergency centers in Commerce and Quinlan.
Today Hunt Regional Medical Center has 66 COVID patients. Of these 66 patients, two have been fully vaccinated. No vaccinated COVID patients are in the Intensive Care Unit or on a ventilator. Our ICU still has 23 patients with 16 of these on ventilators. All 16 of the ICU rooms are now prepared for double occupancy. There are five patients holding in the emergency room in Greenville and we have seven patients being treated in our Post Anesthesia Care unit.
Staffing is going well with the addition of state supplied agency nurses and respiratory therapists. We are not yet at a level where we can reopen the Commerce Emergency Medical Center, but we are evaluating this on a daily basis and hope to have sufficient staffing and equipment soon to make reopening this location possible.
The FDA has granted full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine effective yesterday, August 23, for use in people ages 16 and older. The vaccine is still available under emergency use authorization for those age 12 and up.
“While this and other vaccines have met the FDA’s rigorous, scientific standards for emergency use authorization, as the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product,” acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, MD, said in a news release.