Are Snohomish County hospitals ready for the COVID-19 peak?
EVERETT — Two weeks ago, Dr. George Diaz worried where the supplies would come from to fight an expected surge of COVID-19 patients.
Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, the county’s largest hospital and intensive care unit, needed more beds, more ventilators, more staff, and maybe most of all, more protective equipment.
The hospital had burned through more gowns, gloves, and masks in a month than the entire 51-hospital system uses in a typical year.
“The concern initially was are we going to have enough … to keep going?’’ said Diaz, 48, an infectious disease specialist overseeing the hospital’s response to the virus.
On Wednesday, a more confident Diaz sat in his windowless third-floor office at Providence and talked about what had changed.
At one point, he held up a blue hospital-quality surgical mask manufactured by Kaas Tailored of Mukilteo.
“This,” he said, “is a lifesaver.”
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