Wyoming Hospital Facing COVID ‘Crisis Level,’ Bans Most Visitors

A surge of COVID-19 cases in Wyoming has forced the Memorial Hospital Of Sweetwater County Incident Command Team decided to ban all but a few hospital visitors at an emergency meeting on Friday afternoon.

The only exception to the “no visitors’ rule will be in Obstetrics, where one visitor will be allowed per patient. According to a post on the hospital’s Facebook page, MHSC will also continue to postpone elective surgeries and will consider emergent and urgent cases on a case-by-case level.

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The post quotes emergency services director Kim White as saying “We are at crisis level. We appreciate the patience.” As of Friday afternoon, the hospital had 16 COVID patients. It has opened its same-day surgery unit as an additional COVID unit.

The post went on to quote White as saying “The emergency room staff is extremely busy keeping up with the number of people presenting in the ER. Extra members of the hospital’s healthcare team have been brought in to help cover the influx.”

Hospitals across Wyoming have been seeing a surge of COVID-19 patients as the highly contagious Delta variant continues to claim new victims. Cheyenne Regional Medical Center earlier this week logged its highest number of COVID  patients since December of last year when the pandemic was at its height. Wyoming has one of the lowest COVID vaccination rates in the country.

The federal Centers For Disease Control and Prevention says that while vaccinated people can be infected with COVID, the chances of contracting the disease are 17 times greater for unvaccinated people than for those who have the shots.

CDC also says that almost all deaths from the virus are among people who are not vaccinated.