Mary Washington Hospital urges residents to stay home, make homemade face masks

Across the world, healthcare professionals are at the front lines battling the coronavirus pandemic. In the local Rappahannock health district, things are no different.

At a virtual community town hall on Wednesday, April 1, 2020, Mary Washington Healthcare leaders provided updates with how they are addressing the pandemic.

With a peak in cases not expected for another four to eight weeks in Virginia, the hospital is working to double the emergency department and ICU capacity. The parking deck was converted into a secure structure to care for patients. Additionally, cardiac procedure rooms, post-anesthesia care unit rooms, and other operating rooms are being converted to hold more ICUs.

All elective, nonessential surgeries have been canceled in order to preserve the blood supply and personal protective equipment. 

The disrupted supply chain of protective masks, gloves, and gowns has been challenging for healthcare workers who rely on these materials to keep themselves and other patients safe. 

Mary Washington Healthcare is holding a 5,000 mask challenge to try and get enough masks to keep their healthcare workers safe. See links to patterns for making these masks at the bottom of this story.

“The most important thing members of our community can do right now is stay at home,” McDermott said.

The hospitals have also been taking extensive care to ensure that emergency patients who don’t have the coronavirus are kept safe. Patients are being instructed to wait in their cars instead of a waiting room, they’re being screened for potential coronavirus at the door, and extra cleaning measures have been put in place. 

“I encourage people in the community to not push of needed care too long,” Chief Operations Officer Christopher Newman said.

At Mary Washington, 27 patients had tested positive with COVID-19, as of April 1. Of these 27, 17 have successfully been treated and discharged. 

There is a severe lack in the availability of testing, and some testing measures can have a turnaround as long as five to seven days. This lack of testing means that the number of cases reported today is actually where the cases were several days ago.

If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, Mary Washington Healthcare recommends to assume you have the virus and take the appropriate action. 

• Isolate yourself and carry out self-treatment as you would a normal illness. Seek emergency care if your symptoms get to the point where you cannot care for yourself.
• Community members can call the nurses line at 540-741-110 or the general call center at 540-899-4797 if they are unsure of what to do or want to discuss their symptoms.
• In the Rappahannock region, there are 29 cases in Stafford, 11 cases in Spotsylvania, 6 cases in King George, 4 cases in Fredericksburg, and 1 case in Caroline.

Statewide on Sunday, April 5, 2020, 2,637 people had tested positive for coronavirus (625 more than Friday, April 3), 431 people had been hospitalized (119 more than Friday, April 3, 2020), and 51 had died (five more than Friday, April 3).

Nationwide there are 304,826 cases as of Sunday, April 5, 2020 (91,682 more than Thursday, April 2) and 7,616 deaths (3,103 more than Thursday, April 2).

Standard mask with wire nose piece https://www.marywashingtonhealthcare.com/documents/PDFs/Cloth-Face-Mask-with-wire-nose-piece.pdf 

N95 mask cover with ties https://www.marywashingtonhealthcare.com/documents/PDFs/N95-MASK-COVER-WITH-TIES-Tutorial.pdf 

N95 mask cover with elastic https://www.marywashingtonhealthcare.com/documents/PDFs/Face-shields.pdf