Two health networks are seeing near record numbers of COVID-19 hospitalizations in this latest surge, officials report.

During the Carbon County Interagency Collaborative meeting on Wednesday, representatives from St. Luke’s and Lehigh Valley Health Network provided updates on the health care response in recent weeks.

John Nespoli, president of St. Luke’s Carbon Campus, said the census at the network is “at an all-time high” with about 400 patients with COVID.

Locally, the hospital is seeing about 25 to 27 patients hospitalized at this time with COVID.

“It’s been pretty consistent,” Nespoli said, adding that about 90% of the patients admitted to the hospital are unvaccinated.

St. Luke’s also has restarted its vaccine programs and are doing them every Monday and Tuesday from 4 to 7 p.m. Pfizer doses are administered on Mondays and Moderna doses are on Tuesdays.

The hospital network is also working with schools and the Area Agency on Aging office to get vaccines to students and senior citizens in need of them, as well as their booster shots.

Nespoli added that testing is at an all-time high, but believes this will peak in the next few weeks.

“Fortunately, omicron, the wave is faster than delta in the rest of the world, so we would expect the same thing to happen here,” he said. “We hope and pray that this is evolving into an endemic state. I choose to believe that’s the case.”

Joseph Pinto, chief operating officer for the St. Luke’s Carbon Campus, echoed Nespoli’s thoughts, saying the hospital is seeing a lot of surge, but the staff is doing everything they can, crediting the doctors, nurses and all hospital staff for handling whatever comes through the hospital doors.

Pinto noted that the increasing number of patients coming into the hospital has brought some shifts in where patients are treated inside the hospital.

“Thankfully we have this large hospital that we were able to do that,” he said.

Nespoli added that the hospital has a lot of surge capacity.

On the Lehigh Valley Health Network side, Raymond Bernardi, vice president of operations at the Hazleton and Schuylkill campuses, reported that the health network is seeing very similar cases to St. Luke’s with about 400 COVID patients in its hospitals.

“Like John mentioned, 80 percent of the patients that we have are unvaccinated and close to 100 percent of the patients on ventilators are not vaccinated,” Bernardi said, noting that based on models, the hospital system is expecting to get to last year’s hospitalization numbers by the end of January before seeing the peak.

There continues to be some delay in testing wait times, and both networks ask for patience when people come to get tested. They also remind people that asymptomatic patients will not be tested and symptomatic people must have a testing order from a doctor.

“Our EDs (emergency departments) are extremely busy,” Bernardi said, noting that sometimes wait times for admitting a patient is longer than normal due to the surge and because of staffing challenges. “We are working hard to increase bed capacity to make sure everyone gets the care they need.”

Bernardi thanked the health care workers who have been working tirelessly since the start of the pandemic “to uphold our mission to heal, comfort and care for the community.”

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