Reprinted From This Week’s
Hometown Oneonta, Freeman’s Journal
BASSETT HOLDS
OWN – SO FAR
Numbers Climb, But More Tests
Available, Beds Not Lacking Yet
By ELIZABETH COOPER • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com
COOPERSTOWN – Nine days ago there were no Coronavirus patients among people who called Otsego County home.
As of Tuesday, March 31, there were 16. And one of those, Brenda Utter of Morris, has died.
Patients range in age from 20 to 75, county health officials said. There are 53 people more on mandatory quarantine because they have been in close contact with a positive case.
As the state’s numbers have climbed to the highest in the nation – some 75,000 as of Tuesday, March 31 – doctors at Bassett Healthcare Network have been anxiously preparing for an onslaught of patients here.
Though our numbers are growing, they have not leaped as high as feared.
“We are able to manage the patients that are coming in and need to be cared for,” Dr. Steven Heneghan, Bassett’s Network chief clinical officer, who is overseeing the network’s clinical response to the virus.