The Latest COVID Positive Patient Numbers at SMH: The hospital continues to see an uptick in hospitalizations, now reaching more than 100 COVID positive inpatients. SMH continues to monitor all resources to ensure we can meet the needs to the community. While SMH has enough PPE, equipment and beds, there are growing concerns about proper staffing and the hospital is working hard to combat these challenges.

Keeping Patients & Employees Safe: To reduce the risk of community spread in the hospital, SMH continues to implement a number of precautions to keep employees and patients safe. The no visitor policy is still in place to reduce risks of exposure. SMH is now also requiring eye protection in addition to masks for all staff. David Verinder encourages staff to wear masks in the community as well and be role models to everyone they are around to help slow the COVID-19 spread locally.

The Community Effort: While SMH continues to address the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospital is asking the community to take this seriously and take all proper precautions including hand hygiene, social distancing when possible and wearing masks to reduce the spread of the disease.

Clinical Research Update: It is rare for a community hospital to have such a robust clinical research program, but SMH has emerged as a leader in COVID-19 research and is the first in Florida to enroll patients in a new study. SMH will continue to work to bring needed resources to the community to help fight this disease.