St. Peter’s back to restricted visitation amid COVID-19 increase – Times Union
ALBANY — St. Peter’s Health Partners will begin limiting visitors to its hospitals on Monday, citing rising COVID-19 numbers.
Patients will be permitted one visitor a day in their room during visitation hours, according to the new guidelines, while COVID-19 patients undergoing “continuous aerosol-generating procedures” will be permitted one unique visitor per day for one hour.
The guidelines are relaxed in some situations, including for those related to birth and end-of-life and hospice care.
Visitors are strongly encouraged to be vaccinated and face masks are mandated. The visitation guidelines will be in effect at St. Peter’s, Samaritan and Sunnyview Rehabilitation hospitals, as well as the Albany Memorial Samaritan campus.
St. Peter’s has rolled out the restrictions as Albany County is reporting higher coronavirus numbers, including four new deaths announced Friday, which join more than 500 new cases reported in a four-day span last week.
Statewide, the seven-day average is 32 new positive cases per 100,000, according to the state’s COVID dashboard, a level not seen since Feb. 8, when the omicron variant was subsiding after a holiday surge. Two omicron subvariants are being blamed for the recent high case counts, which started in Central New York, but is now spreading throughout upstate.
In the Capital Region, new confirmed COVID-19 cases are slightly higher than the state average, at 34 cases per 100,000 people.
Hospitalizations are still much lower than they were at the height of the omicron surge. But in the Capital Region, COVID-19 positive hospital patients have more than doubled since the beginning of April, from a little more than four such patients per 100,000, to more than nine people per 100,000, based on a seven-day average.
Officials at other Capital Region hospitals didn’t immediately respond on Sunday when asked if they are weighing changes to visitation protocols.
Albany Medical Center and Ellis Medicine allow two visitors at a time per patient, with exceptions granted for compassionate services.
Saratoga Hospital permits one visitor per day.
St. Peter’s said it will also resume pre-procedural testing. Beginning Thursday, “any patient scheduled for a procedure at one of our hospitals will be required to undergo COVID-19 testing three days prior to their scheduled procedure,” the health system said.
The majority of upstate New York has been flagged by the CDC as having medium to high COVID-19 community levels. Two counties in the Capital Region, Albany and Rensselaer, remained at a high level as of Thursday, the most recent day for which data is available.
New York has the most “high” risk counties nationwide.
The CDC computes “high” risk based on confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people, as well as new hospital admissions of COVID-19 patients and percent of staffed hospital beds that are occupied with those confirmed to have the illness.
While the state Health Department has advised indoor mask wearing in counties at high risk, there have been no pandemic protocols reinstated.
