San Juan Regional Medical Center sees decline in COVID hospitalizations

FARMINGTON, N.M.— It’s almost been a year since San Juan Regional Medical Center announced its first case of COVID-19. While health officials said it’s been a hard year for everyone, now there is some relief.

“We are doing very well, and we have seen a significant decrease in our COVID positive patient population. It really is literally 25%, well 30%, of what it was a mere four weeks ago,” said Suzanne Smith, Chief Nursing Officer at SJRMC.

Health officials said they’ve had fewer COVID-19 hospitalizations, but that they’ve seen an increase in non-COVID related hospitalizations.

“A normal pattern that we would see in winter is winter illnesses, so that is to be expected," Smith added.

Now, those non-COVID patients can have visitors after San Juan Regional changed its visitor policy to one per patient.

“We had restricted our visitation pretty significantly where visitors were only allowed on a case-by-case special needs basis. We have opened our visitations for non-COVID patients from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m.” Smith said.

While the hospital is doing better than it was a year ago health officials say the pandemic is not over and should continue to mitigate the spread.