For 20 hours Wednesday, the delta variant put the University of Cincinnati Medical Center at capacity, and word went out to the emergency responders and other regional hospitals that UCMC had to limit emergency intake to patients with trauma, burn or stroke.
The alert lifted at 7 p.m., but Wednesday was the third time in a month that the academic health center declared itself “at capacity” as caseloads from the fourth surge of the novel coronavirus pandemic strained weary doctors, nurses and caregivers at Cincinnati-area facilities.
The warning also served as an acute exercise of Surgenet, an online tool within the Ohio Department of Health that hospitals across the state have used for more than a decade to track beds, supplies and other necessities. Surgenet was built for one-time crises, when an incident overwhelms a hospital with patients, then subsides.
