UPMC stands ground, will continue elective surgeries despite Wolf’s order

UPMC doctors on Friday defended their decision to keep performing elective surgeries throughout its hospitals during the covid-19 outbreak, saying the procedures cannot always be safely delayed.

“This is not northern Italy. We are not Wuhan right now,” Dr. Graham Snyder, UPMC chief of infection prevention, said during a news conference at UPMC Montefiore. “We shouldn’t stop providing care if we think we can do that safely.”

UPMC doctors said they have not seen evidence of widespread community transmission in the Pittsburgh region, an observation they said is supported by new research involving 950 samples collected throughout the region since February.

That study found only five positive adults and no positive children among those samples.

Testing that was done as part of that research cannot be used to diagnose individual patients, said Dr. John Williams, chief of pediatric infectious diseases.

The results do show that there is no evidence that there is a “cluster of activity” in Pittsburgh, he said.

Separate from the study, there are 28 symptomatic patients across the UPMC system who have tested positive for covid-19, with four of those people currently hospitalized, Snyder said.

That includes patients outside of Allegheny County, where health authorities reported 28 confirmed cases of covid-19 Friday.

Allegheny County Health Department officials on Thursday also said that they do not believe there are clusters of covid-19 cases in the county, but did say that some cases are the result of community spread.

Community spread refers to cases in which someone is infected with the virus, but it cannot be determined where or how the patient was infected.

“Similar to what we’ve seen in other states and other countries, we know that the number of those testing positive will continue to rise as testing increases and becomes more available,” health department Director Debra Bogen said. “Now that we do have increasing spread of the virus in our community, our goal here is to slow that spread as much as possible, particularly to high-risk groups through careful mitigation efforts.”

Those mitigation efforts include asking health care providers to postpone elective procedures in order to ensure that they are adequately prepared to handle a potential influx of covid-19 patients, Bogen and other health officials have said.

The research gives UPMC officials confidence to proceed with procedures such as heart valve replacements or cancer surgeries that could pose setbacks to patients if they are delayed, the doctors said.

Doctors are working directly with patients to determine whether procedures should move forward, said Dr. Don Yealy, chair of the system’s emergency medicine department.

“We are continually gauging the current conditions, and those are the conditions nationally and internationally, but more importantly, the conditions right here in Western Pennsylvania, Allegheny County, Pittsburgh,” Yealy said.

The system has enough bed capacity to treat patients who develop the disease, he said, noting that UPMC hospitals have a 5,500-bed capacity, of which 750 could be used as intensive care beds.

“We are and we rapidly will adjust our services and our plans based on the science and the facts,” Yealy said.

UPMC officials said its covid-19 test turnaround times are mainly eight to 12 hours. The system is able to test 80 specimens per day and officials expect that number to double by next week.

Testing facilities are also expected to be added next week throughout the system, including Altoona, Erie, Harrisburg and Williamsport.