YRMC standing by for flu season and possible covid-19 spike

YRMC has a battle plan in place as we head into late Fall and Winter season

As cases of coronavirus continue to rise across the U.S. and abroad, perhaps the big question for Yuma County is if there could potentially be a so-called “second wave” of cases.

But in light of the pandemic, Yuma Regional Medical Center is fully equipped to handle this year’s flu season, on top of the possibility of having more coronavirus patients.

YRMC’S Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Bharat Magu, said “We are fully geared up - if it peaks up at any level, even close to what we saw, we are prepared with our testing capacity, our staffing needs - gearing up for additional staff for the inpatient site, which we generally do for the flu season anyway, but this year our focus is twice as heavy in maintaining operations and resources.”

But Dr. Magu also says he wouldn’t refer to this as a second wave, because according to him, we never got past the first. He said this is because YRMC never stopped admitting coronavirus patients since the pandemic began back in March.

More than a dozen midwestern states in the U.S. are seeing a rise in positive infections this month. In some cases, the figures have been steadily increasing at a rate similar to the peak of the pandemic months prior. 

Yuma County has seen a stable number of cases over the past couple of weeks. On Tuesday, however, the County’s Health Department reported 43 new positive cases - a considerable jump compared to previous daily updates from the Health Department.

To play it safe this flu season, Dr. Magu is highly recommending people to get their flu shots.

"This is the most important year to get a flu shot. It will not only protect you from the regular flu, but if God forbid you get covid-19 and the regular flu, the havoc it will create on the human body - we don't even know what it can turn out to be... I highly urge the community of Yuma to get a flu shot this year."