Covenant Health leaders said Thursday the hospital group was well prepared for a possible surge in patients with coronavirus, despite impact from disruptions to the global supply chain of personal protective equipment.
"We have a surge plan like we have always had," Covenant's Parkwest Medical Center president Neil Heatherly said. "It involves how to expand our capabilities for a max influx of patients or how to provide the proper environment to care for these patients. And we are prepared to execute the plan if and when a surge happens."
He said the hospital "would have to wait and see" if a surge would happen, but said it was coordinating on a regular basis with sister hospitals in the Covenant system as well as other hospital groups in the Knoxville area.
Global shortages of personal protective gear, like surgical and N95 respirator masks, have impacted the hospital, Covenant's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Mark Browne said.
But he added "We have been very successful in getting and keeping the appropriate personal protective equipment that we think we’ll need.”
Covenant hospitals recently began sanitizing and reusing some N95 masks.
"What keeps me up at night is really the unknown," Browne said. "We get new information every day. And just keeping up with all that plethora of information that’s coming so quickly is a challenge, but I feel like we’ve been able to handle it well."
