Polis: Parkview Medical Center briefly reached capacity this week

PUEBLO, Colo. (KRDO) -- During Tuesday's COVID-19 press conference, Governor Jared Polis made a comment regarding one of the city of Pueblo's major hospitals, saying Parkview Medical Center had reached capacity this week.

"Parkview Hospital in pueblo reached more than 100% capacity yesterday," said Governor Jared Polis. "100 COVID patients. Multiple patients were transferred to other facilities. There is room for them still but with more and more hospitals experiencing what Parkview is facing, there are only so many beds in the system."

This took Parkview Medical Center off guard. Parkview Medical Center's spokesperson Racheal Morris originally told KRDO the hospital was not at capacity but later clarified that the hospital did reach capacity Monday morning and had to initiate transfers.

"We came in Monday morning at capacity," Morris said. "We utilized our resources with UCHealth. They are a great partner of ours. We initiated the process of transfers. We are accepting COVID patients today."

According to Morris, the increase in hospitalizations occurred over the last week.

One week ago, KRDO sat down with Dr. Sadeep Vijan, the Chief Medical Doctor at Parkview, and discussed capacity levels at the hospital.

"We can look after 220 medical service patients in the hospital. In addition to that, we can take 42 patients in the ICUs. In addition to that, we can expand 30 beds outside those two domains to care for patients, so that's what capacity looks like for us," said Dr. Vijan. "But we don't just care for COVID-19, we care for cancer; we care for trauma; we care for heart patients. The real question is what is our capacity to care for everything. We can take an onslaught of COVID patients should we need to, but resources are finite. We have a physical building. We can't care for people in the parking lot. But we are confident we have the capacity to provide care for the people."

Governor Polis also said Parkview was transferring COVID-19 patients to other Denver area hospitals.

Morris says they've 'never turned any one away'. However, it is unclear if the hospital has been forced to transfer patients to other hospitals.