City extends mask ordinance as hospitals exceed capacity

By:  Janice Francis-Smith The Journal RecordOctober 13, 2020

The Oklahoma City Council on Tuesday voted to extend the city’s mask ordinance until Dec. 7 after listening to health experts present information indicating the ordinance is working.

Meanwhile, local hospitals are teetering on the edge of overcapacity.

“I think it’s important that we note that masking reduces transmission of infection in the community by 70-85%, and our goals with it are to prevent death and morbidity, to ensure that hospitals can function at capacity and that we enable businesses to stay open,” Oklahoma City-County Health Department Executive Director Patrick McGough.

McGough displayed for the council various charts during the meeting, held by teleconference, which showed how new cases and positivity rates in the Oklahoma City metro area showed a decline 21 days after the mask ordinance first passed, in July. Cases continued to show a decline 42 days and 56 days after the mask mandate was put in place. Recently, rates have begun to climb again – a fact McGough said was likely tied to universities reopening.

The current ordinance requiring Oklahoma residents ages 9 and up to wear a mask in public places was set to expire Oct. 20. Those who refuse to either put on a mask or leave the premises are subject to a $9 fine on conviction for a first or second offense, with the fine rising to a maximum of $100 for third and subsequent offenses.

Hospitalization rates are on a troublingly steady incline, however, McGough said, though he noted the most recent numbers hospitals have reported to the state Department of Health show ICU beds still are available.

Even though the statistics show beds are still available, don’t be too confident in those numbers, Regional Medical Response System Director at Emergency Medical Services Authority (EMSA) Heather Yazdanipour told the council.

“The problem with that is we’re having a shortage of staffing,” Yazdanipour said. “So we may have beds that are technically listed as part of the hospital’s capacity; what I don’t have is the capability to staff it to take care of those patients.”

Even before the pandemic, the Oklahoma City metro area was experiencing a shortage of nurses, McGough said, and the current health crisis has exacerbated the issue.

Different types of patients require different levels and methods of care, Yazdanipour said. A COVID-19 patient with a psychiatric disorder, for instance, requires two extra nurses in order to provide 24-hour monitoring of that patient. Patients that come in from a correctional facility likewise require extra hands, she said.

Some local hospitals may be able to expand capacity to take on more non-COVID patients, she said, but the surge in COVID-19 patients has caused her to start moving patients out of the region to other hospitals that can provide the proper care.

“If I need an ICU bed and don’t have one here, I’ve been spending a lot overnights – and I apologize for my voice – but a lot of overnights calling other regions in Oklahoma to see if they have a hospital bed that can take that patient and then finding transportation to get that patient to that bed,” Yazdanipour said. “We are definitely feeling a crunch, and all of our facilities are well above capacity. They’re functioning at an average of about 110 to 120% above capacity.”

Moving patients to Tulsa, where some local patients have already gone, puts a strain on the patient, a strain on EMSA and a strain on the health system as a whole, she said.

As the hospitalization rate “keeps creeping up on us,” Yazdanipour said, she urged the council to continue the mask mandate.

“Masking is so important; we understand what masks do and how they reduce the spread,” Yazdanipour said. “I think the mask ordinance is definitely our saving grace.”

Her region includes seven counties, and a lot of the cases that are being transferred from rural counties into the Oklahoma City metro area are coming from cities and towns that don’t have mask mandates, Yazdanipour said.

“Not trying to be political, but you get laughed at and looked at funny when you wear a mask in some places, and unfortunately that’s where these patients are coming from,” Yazdanipour said.

Councilwoman JoBeth Hamon, Ward 6, also noted the cost to hospitals as the virus spreads among service workers who likely are not covered by insurance.