Hospital Emergency Room Nurse Director Shane Emmert leads a first-day orientation briefing to Oregon Army National Gaurd hospital relief mission members at West Valley Hospital in Dallas, Oregon, on Jan. 18, 2022. (Maj. W. Chris Clyne/Oregon National Guard)
National Guard soldiers have returned to two local hospitals to aid health care workers who are confronting a surge of Covid patients on top of already busy operations.
Forty-eight soldiers are deployed to Salem Health, with seven of them at West Valley Hospital in Dallas, spokeswoman Lisa Wood said. The rest are at Salem Hospital. Soldiers began their latest mission Jan. 18.
The guard members deployed aren’t health care workers, but are aiding hospitals with jobs like dishwashing, folding sheets, sanitation and other tasks that free up health care workers to spend more time caring for patients.
Gov. Kate Brown announced last week she was ordering 1,200 guard members to hospitals around Oregon to help confront the omicron surge. Salem Hospital had 87 patients with Covid in hospital beds Wednesday, up from 50 two weeks ago.
Since Christmas, the hospital has consistently had more patients in beds than the 494 it’s licensed to care for.
The hospital also sought the guard’s aid to confront the delta surge of Covid patients which began in late summer. That deployment ended Dec. 10, Wood said.
Maj. Stephen Bomar, spokesman for the Oregon Military Department, said no other hospitals in Marion or Polk county have requested aid from the guard. Another 50 soldiers could be deployed to Salem Health next week.
He said the guard asks soldiers to volunteer for missions before ordering anyone to leave their civilian jobs.
“This time we’ve been very fortunate and it’s been mostly all volunteers. What we tried to do is not use the same personnel again – that way they can continue on with their civilian work,” he said.
The mission is federally funded through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Bomar said.
-Rachel Alexander
