ROCHELLE — Rochelle Community Hospital CEO Gregg Olson said Friday that the recent COVID-19 surge in the area is putting testing and staffing under stress at the hospital. 

As of Monday, Ogle County’s COVID-19 positivity rate was 22.58 percent with 1,739.63 cases per 100,000 people. Olson said that RCH has recently been administering double the usual amount of COVID-19 tests.

“It puts a strain on staffing and supplies,” Olson said. “We’re on an allocation for testing supplies. We don’t know how many we’re going to get. That becomes a real concern and you start to run out and the demand for them is still high. We haven’t run out, but it’s still tight at times. We’re at the mercy of our supplies. But staffing has been our biggest concern. 

RCH is averaging “about 2-3” inpatients with COVID-19 in beds per day, which Olson said isn’t much more than it was dealing with before the current surge. 

The hospital uses PCR COVID-19 tests, which Olson said is the most accurate type. It has the ability to use rapid tests as well. While there’s always the possibility of false positives and negatives with testing, Olsons said RCH hasn’t had “any real issues” with results so far. 

“We have a process in place,” Olson said. “We get hundreds of calls from the public. We’re overwhelmed with calls. It’s usually testing questions. We’re still testing staff. That’s added to our testing numbers. We’re managing it. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good. When you have these numbers, there’s been some delays in getting results back.”

Olson said to his knowledge, RCH has seen just one Omicron variant positive case in its testing so far. The hospital is seeing “a lot more by far” of the Delta variant. He anticipates seeing more Omicron cases and RCH is bracing for that surge, though it hasn’t seen a lot of it yet. 

Olson said he’s been informed that the current surge hasn’t even peaked yet, and the CDC and scientist say it could in 2-3 weeks. 

“We thought we’d be beyond this by now,” Olson said. “We thought we were turning the corner a few months ago before these variants. This has been a daily challenge for us. We talk about these issues every day. It’s something we try to manage the best we can. That’s difficult. This started in March 2020 and we’re still going at it. And numbers are increasing.”

RCH recently increased its visitor restrictions due to the COVID-19 surge. Patients in the emergency department or on the medical/surgical floor, including ICU, are allowed one designated visitor (must be the same person) for the duration of their stay. It also closed its cafeteria and catering until further notice. 

Olson said RCH is preparing “every day” for further COVID-19 surges in the future and is making staffing contingency plans and looking at different hospital departments. 

“We don’t want to close them, but we may have to,” Olson said. “We’ll have to sit down and make those decisions. We’re constantly ready for those what-ifs. I think our staff has done a good job in that area.”

The RCH CEO called it “very difficult” to put further restrictions in place and stop some services and didn’t want to have to take the “last resort” measures. Olson called keeping people as safe as possible part of the hospital’s responsibility to the community. 

“The message is please get vaccinated if you can,” Olson said. “That’s the one way we’re certain can help shut some of these outbreaks down. And keep wearing the masks and social distancing. All of our internal meetings are going virtual. We’re taking an abundance of caution in every way. And that’s what we’ll keep doing.”