Wood

Wood

LAURINBURG — As COVID-19 cases continue to grow in the community, the Laurinburg City Council invited Scotland Health Care System CEO Greg Wood to speak about the local impact.

“So what’s going on in our community,” Wood said. “Again, we’ve seen a gradual flattening for a little bit but then we’ve seen a pretty significant increase … we’re supposed to be coming down, we’re supposed to not be in the second wave yet but in Scotland County, we’ve seen a pretty significant spike in cases.”

Wood did explain that those who are getting the virus are less sick than they had been and only 10 to 12 patients have been hospitalized at a time.

“What we’re getting is a pretty good churn, two or three in (and) two or three out,” Wood said. “We’re just under 1,000 infections in the county, only 12 deaths … but right now our incident rate has caught up to everyone in the region except for Robeson,. We’ve got more infections than any other county around us, including Marlboro, except for Robeson but we’re getting pretty close to Robeson.”

Wood added that winter is usually the hospital’s busy season, but there is a concern for space in the hospital.

“We really think for the next few months we’re going to run 10 to 20 patients on a regular basis,” Wood said. “If we get high-end winter volume that we normally have and we get high-end COVID volume we will not have enough space. We’ve already closed down our inpatient rehab unit … we’ve had to take that seven-bed unit and flip it into cube beds.”

Wood continued that the hospital has had to add more ICU space as well for patients. But the hospital does have enough personal protective units.

Wood also spoke on the virus in the country as a whole.

“We’ve hit that unfathomable 200,000 deaths,” Wood said. “Who would have thought Jan. 1 that this would have happened?”

Wood added that right now a lot of people are tired of wearing masks and social distancing, but no one is sure what the future will look like with COVID-19

“Most of the models out there say we don’t know what’s going to happen this winter,” Wood said. “So what’s going to happen this winter with the flu, everyone is wearing masks so maybe that will help.”

Wood did ask the council to continue to promote safe behavior in the community.

“We can’t take our feet off the gas this is going to go on for a long time,” Wood said. “Spring at the earliest, summer most likely … this is not about politics. People are saying I don’t believe in masking, I don’t believe it’s that big of a deal. Talk to some of my staff.”

Scotland County has different numbers than the Scotland Health Care System due to the system covering several counties such as Marlboro, S.C., Scotland and Robeson.

Reach Katelin Gandee at [email protected].