As the coronavirus rages on, hospital emergency room departments continue to feel the strain.

At St. Luke’s University Health Network, conventional health care issues have combined with COVID-19 cases to increase the workload, according to John Nespoli, president of St. Luke’s Carbon Campus.

“It has been very busy; not really a COVID surge, but more traditional health care; chest pain, belly pain, diabetes and some typical trauma,” Nespoli said. “Combined with COVID, that has stretched us.”

Nespoli said that while it’s taken its toll, workers are cross-trained to handle the situation.

“The teamwork at the hospital has been incredible,” he said. “Morale is good.”

Despite the surge, Nespoli said he believes the hospital continues to meet the needs of its patients.

“We’re appropriately staffed,” he said. “We’re in pretty good shape.”

Similarly, Lehigh Valley Health Network has also felt the demands at all of its facilities, including its Lehigh Valley Hospital - Pocono, and Lehigh Valley Hospital - Schuylkill campuses.

“As far as overall volume, hasn’t really changed that much since the beginning of the pandemic,” said Dr. David Burmeister, DO, MBA. “We did have an initial decrease back in April; much less patients during that time than it is now.”

Burmeister said he attributes that to the population being more familiar in dealing with the pandemic all these months later.

“We’re in the winter months, and people are getting used to being in the pandemic, and rightly so,” he said. “We want patients who need to come to (the ERs), we want them to come.”

Burmeister cited the past few weeks in particular where the situation has really manifested.

“Over the past two weeks, I would say our volume has increased even more (due to) higher acuity (sicker patient population),” he said. “The challenges that all emergency room departments have had is that we are seeing a sicker patient population, and more of those patients are needing to be admitted into the hospital.

“That presents challenges for our emergency room departments across the entire network, and quite frankly, the entire country.”

However, Burmeister said Lehigh Valley is prepared for the influx.

“We have developed programs where we are able to take care of patients virtually outside of the hospital, which has helped us having patients being admitted into the hospital,” he said. “So we continue to develop more and more programs as this pandemic deepens.”

The situation isn’t unique only to Lehigh Valley, Burmeister stressed.

“It’s no different anywhere else,” he said. “We’re all dealing with the same challenges in other states.”

Regardless, Burmeister said patients need to seek treatment at the health network’s ERs.

“It’s really important for us to keep in mind that we need to make sure that the public understands that if they are experiencing life-threatening symptoms, chest pains, shortness of breath, it’s important to get the care that they need, and if they need the emergency room department, that’s where we need them to go,” he said. “Even though we are all having challenges with COVID, we still want them to come to the emergency room if they want to.”

Burmeister praised the population for doing its part to stop the spread.

“As far as the influenza virus, it has not been significantly prevalent in our communities yet; neither have other viruses that cause a common cold,” he said. “We have seen a significant reduction this year in the middle of the pandemic in regard to those types of respiratory viruses; that’s most likely due to people have been wearing masks, have been social distancing, and have been properly practicing hand hygiene.”

Burmeister stressed the significance of people continuing to follow those guidelines.

“It is extremely important for our community to continue to follow the principles that we put into place in the beginning of this pandemic, even with the beginning of the vaccine distribution,” he said.

Burmeister remains confident the health network will continue to meet the needs of its patients.

“We’re going to do everything we can to be able to take care of our patients as comprehensively as we can; continue to work though this together, and we’ll deal with whatever we need to deal with as we get deeper into the pandemic,” he said.

While he expects the trend to continue, Burmeister said the goal is to see the number of cases lessen over time.

“We will most likely continue to have some increases over January,” he said. “But we’re hoping we start to see a decrease at the end of January as long as people are paying attention to the principles that have been put into place.”

Burmeister noted that the larger Emergency Room and Observation Unit that recently opened at Lehigh Valley’s Cedar Crest Campus “has helped all our communities.

“It has allowed us to be more flexible, given us more inpatient capacity, more emergency room capacity, allowed us to level the load,” he said. It has helped Monroe, Schuylkill, Luzerne as well as Carbon County.

Burmeister added, “All of us are going to have challenges with moving patients with where they need to go, but it has really helped to offload.”