ALBANY COUNTY — On Thursday morning, as Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy announced two more COVID-19 deaths, 208 new infections, and a record-breaking 98 hospitalizations, an Albany Medical Center doctor assured the public that local hospitals have the capacity to handle the current surge.

“We see a path for caring for more patients with COVID if and when that becomes necessary and unfortunately I think that will become necessary,” said Ferdinand Venditti, the executive vice president for System Care Delivery and the hospital’s general director at Albany Med.

Venditti explained new therapies for treating COVID-19 and also detailed how regional hospitals are working together. Finally, he went over some of the logistics of distributing a vaccine.

Albany Med on Thursday had 63 patients hospitalized with COVID-19; thirteen of those patients were under intensive care and two of them were on ventilators, he said.

“That’s very different than what we saw in the spring,” said Venditti. Typically, the ICU numbers then would have been double and half of those ICU patients would have been on ventilators, he said.

He said the change was due to “a combination of factors.”

The demographics of patients have changed as more of them are coming from the community rather than from nursing homes or other congregate settings. Also, he said, the age distribution is broader. Currently, Albany Med patients with COVID-19 range in age from 17 to 96, he said.

“We’ve learned a lot about how to care for patients with COVID so, when they come in, when we first diagnose them, we give them a cocktail of treatments right out of the gates,” Venditti said, naming  remdesivir, an antiviral medication; convalescent plasma, using blood from people who have recovered from COVID-19; and dexamethasone, a corticosteroid medication.

“We use high-flow oxygen as opposed to ventilation and we think that makes a difference as well,” he said.

He added, “There’s been speculation perhaps the virus has changed. I don’t know of any data specifically about that.”

Working together

Venditti said that Albany Med’s experience has been replicated throughout the region.

Since March, Albany Med has coordinated with 12 hospitals in the region; some of them are outside of the eight counties designated by the state as the Capital Region for the purposes of COVID protocols. Hospitals in Amsterdam, Glens Falls, Saranac Lake, and Cooperstown are also included.

Those hospitals have shared resources, accepted transferred patients, helped each other with testing when needed, and shared medical approaches, Venditti said.

In the spring, they spoke daily and now have conference calls twice weekly.

The hospitals together, as of Tuesday, the day of the last conference call, had 301 COVID-19 patients with 43 under intensive care and 23 on ventilators, said Venditti. Those last two numbers would have been double in March, he said, which is also reflected in state data.

“We’re actually trying to work like a health-care system,” Vendtti said of the hospitals.

On Friday, hospital representatives are scheduled to talk about “how we might load balance should we get to a circumstance where that becomes necessary,” Venditti said, adding, “We are very confident that we have this currently under control.”

Vaccines

On vaccines, Venditti said that Albany Med started a work group in September to figure out details of administering a vaccine, including consent issues, how to keep track of people being vaccinated since two shots are required, and how to feed information to the state.

The two vaccines that will be available soonest — one from Pfizer and BioNTech and the other from Moderna — “are a little bit different,” Venditti said. both are novel, using messenger RNA and each requires different handling.

“The Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at ultra-cold temperatures, not the kind of freezers most hospitals have,” he said, noting that Albany Medical Center, as an academic institution, does have an ultra-cold freezer.

Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday that the state has identified 90 sites across New York that can meet the requirements to store the Pfizer vaccine.

“The Moderna vaccine is a little more tolerant. It will last 30 days in a refrigerator and six months in a standard freezer,” said Venditti.

Venditti concluded, “We are prepared to provide the care the community needs. That doesn’t mean we’re not worried about what’s happening. The numbers are troubling.”

He displayed his mask and urged everyone to wear a mask properly, covering mouth and nose, as well as to wash their hands and stay six feet from one another.

“Everyone in this community has a role to play in combating this pandemic,” said Venditti. Of the three protocols, he said, “It seems like such a simple thing but it really is important.”

Newest numbers

McCoy noted at the start of the press conference that Wednesday, Dec. 9, marked the first time more than 3,000 Americans died of COBVID-19 in a single day; he said that; roughly two Americans die of the disease every single minute, he said.

“These are real people with families, not just statistics,” McCoy said.

Statewide, the positivity rate, based on Wednesday’s test results was 5.15 percent, Cuomo announced in a release.

The Capital Region, of which Albany County is a part, has a positivity rate of 5.51 percent. The Finger Lakes region is the highest at 8.03 percent and the Southern Tier remains the lowest at 2.39 percent.

The Capital Region currently has 253 residents hospitalized with COVID-19, which is 0.02 percent of the population, leaving 26 percent of hospital beds available. Statewide, 0.03 percent of residents are hospitalized with the disease and 22 percent of hospital beds are available.

In the Capital Region, 313 patients are under intensive care with COVID-19, occupying 180 ICU beds, leaving 44 percent available. Statewide, 35 percent of ICU beds are available.

As of Thursday morning, Albany County has 7,304 confirmed cases of COVID-19, McCoy announced.

Of the 208 new cases, 21 had close contact with someone infected with the disease, 173 did not have a clear source of infection identified at this time, and 14 are health-care workers or residents of congregate settings.

The five-day average for new daily positives increased to 170 from 163.8.

There are now 1,400 active cases in Albany County, up from 1,319 on Wednesday. The number of county residents under mandatory quarantine increased to 2,413 from 2,306

So far, 27,136 Albany County residents have completed quarantine. Of those, 5,904  had tested positive and recovered.

There were 13 new hospitalizations reported overnight, and there are 98 county residents currently hospitalized from the virus – a net increase of four. Fourteen patients are under intensive care, down from 19 on Thursday. The county’s hospitalization rate rose from 1.32 percent to 1.34 percent.

The two county residents who died of COVID-19 since Wednesday were a man in his seventies and a woman in her nineties.

Their deaths bring the county’s COVID-19 death toll to 172.

At the end of the half-hour press conference, McCoy returned to his opening statement of two Americans dying every minute. During the time of the press conference, he said, “We may have lost 60 lives … in the country. This is truly a sad day and we need to turn it around.”