ATLANTA — Georgia's largest hospital is continuing to see a steady number of coronavirus patients.
Grady Memorial Hospital's medical director believes that it may have to do with a new level of testing they started this month.
Channel 2′s Carol Sbarge spoke to Dr. Robert Jansen, who said the hospital is continuing to average about 65 patients or so. He said it’s been that way for several weeks.
"As opposed to some of the other hospitals in the community, we have not seen a decrease in the number of patients with COVID-19," Jansen said. "Part of this I attribute to the fact that we test all of our admissions now."
Jansen said they’ve uncovered people who were asymptomatic but were coming to Grady for other reasons.
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Patients are able to get those test results back within hours. Hospital employees are also able to get tested when they want to.
On Tuesday, Gov. Brian Kemp announced that Georgia has received its first shipment of the drug remdesivir from the federal government. He said the state got 30 cases of the drug.
Grady expects to get some of that today. Remdesivir continues to be studied as it's been used in the treatment of some very serious cases of coronavirus.
“Remdesivir has been shown to be beneficial, the degree to which I think still needs more study,” Jansen said. “But it has been shown to decrease some mortality and some duration of the disease, particularly in those that are very sick.”
Jansen said for a while, Grady saw a drop-off in patients coming to the emergency room, likely because they were worried about the virus. Now, they are seeing an increase again in people coming in.
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