EAST STROUDSBURG, Pa. — Doctors and nurses at Lehigh Valley Hospital - Pocono in East Stroudsburg are breathing a sigh of relief. The hospital is reporting a drop in COVID-related hospitalizations.
"We see our numbers are actually flat at the moment. They really haven't changed. There may be a little bit of an improvement over the last week, but they're not going up now, and they were skyrocketing there for a while," said Dr. Jonathan Goldner, associate chief medical officer at Lehigh Valley Hospital - Pocono in East Stroudsburg.
Dr. Goldner says the hospital currently has 58 hospitalizations, down from about 60 to 65 people they saw last week.
Most of them are not fully vaccinated.
"Out of the 58 patients, 44 are totally unvaccinated. Partially vaccinated are 14, and there are only two people in the hospital that actually have the booster," Dr. Goldner said. "So the booster definitely works; the vaccine definitely works."
In Monroe County, a few weeks ago, the county had some of the worst numbers in the state. Now cases have dramatically improved.
Dr. Goldner says when it comes to the current trend, he's hopeful that both positive cases and hospitalizations will continue to come down.
"If you look at things like what happened in South Africa where it all started, with the Omicron variant, it kind of did a similar thing where it decreased very quickly, so we're hoping that will occur here," said Dr. Goldner.
Doctors say the best form of prevention is still the vaccine.
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