Coronavirus in Oklahoma: Governor announces new regional surge plan, opposes additional federal bailout
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt announced Thursday that he is opposed to an additional federal stimulus package at the current time.
"I don't think we need another package, no," Stitt said.
Stitt said Oklahoma hasn't yet been able to fully distribute the $1.2 billion it was allocated earlier.
"The messsage back to the White House was before we go to the well and do another $2 trillion bailout, let's get these monies out the door first," Stitt said.
Stitt made the comments at a wide-ranging news conference that was mostly devoted to discussing the state's progress in battling COVID-19 and a new surge plan that has been developed.
Oklahoma has not experienced an overwhelming surge of COVID-19 patients statewide, but hot spots have sprung up in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa metro areas, Oklahoma Health Commissioner Lance Frye said Thursday.
Frye admitted to having some concern about the impact of reopening Oklahoma schools, but said "I'm also understanding that children need to be back in school."
Frye said the stories he has seen so far indicate that children under 10 don't spread the virus to the degree that adults do.
Stitt said that on March 30, when the COVID crisis was becoming serious in Oklahoma, the state had 560 people in hospitals and officials were predicting as many as 5,000 might be hospitalized by mid-April.
Stitt said Oklahoma hospitalizations never reached that high, but instead have been fluctuating between about 550 and 650 for the past month.
He credited a series of executive orders he issued as well as actions by Oklahomans in following advice from medical experts for helping keep cases down.
Medical professionals have repeatedly advised people to social distance, wear masks when around other people in public spaces and to wash their hands frequently. While Stitt has urged Oklahomans to follow that advice, he frequently has appeared in public without a mask and personally contracted the virus, but reported having few symptoms and has recovered.
Stitt praised the work of Oklahoma health care employees, saying the average hospital stay for COVID-19 patients was 10 to 14 days in the beginning, but those stays have now been reduced to an average of 5 to 8 days through advances in medical treatments.
Since June 1, 99.3 percent of Oklahomans who tested positive for COVID-19 have survived and remain alive, Stitt said.
COVID-19 cases haven't surged as much as projected in Oklahoma rural areas, but the Oklahoma City and Tulsa metro areas have become hot spots, Frye said.
To cope with those hot spots, a revised surge plan has been established that officials described as a regional "distributed model of care."
Under the revised surge plan, hospitals in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa areas will continue to provide care for both COVID and non-COVID patients until they reach 100 percent of their staffed capacity, said Lt. Col. Matt Stacy, who is part of the governor's COVID-19 response team.
Once capacity is reached, Oklahoma City and metro area hospitals have a plan in place that will allow them to care for an additional 340 COVID-19 patients.
Stacy said 215 of those surge beds will be available in the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area.
Six hospital systems will be responsible for providing 120 of those beds, Stacy said. He identified those as the Norman Regional Health System; OU Medical Cente;, St. Anthony Hospital; Mercy Hospital; Integris Baptist Medical Center; and AllianceHealth Midwest. An additional 95 patients can be placed at Integris' Portland Avenue campus if that becomes necessary, he said.
In the Tulsa region, 125 surge beds will be available at the OSU Medical Center, he said.
"The original modeling showed that they were expecting 30,000 Oklahomans to die," Frye said. "So far, to date, we've had 593 fatalities from COVID-19 in Oklahoma."