Montgomery mayor Steven Reed: Hospitals asked me to sound the alarm over ICU beds [View all]

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed said Thursday that the local intensive care unit numbers he shared a day earlier were given to him by hospital administrators, who asked him to spread the word that the city was almost out of ICU beds as the pandemic escalates here.

Reed offered that context hours after Baptist Health released a statement addressing its local ICU capacity.

At a press conference Wednesday, Reed told members of the media that Baptist hospitals in Montgomery and Prattville were out of ICU beds and that some patients were being transferred to Birmingham for care. A day later, Reed went back in front of the media to explain that he presented those numbers after being “in constant communication” with Baptist and Jackson leaders.

“We were told quite frankly the shortage in ICU beds that we had and where we were headed,” Reed said Thursday. “One of the CEOs mentioned this was a manageable situation but was not sustainable. Any time that you can see the cliff is coming you want to warn the people that you’re leading that there’s a cliff up there. You don’t want to wait until you get right up to it before you tell somebody.

Read more: https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2020/05/21/montgomery-mayor-hospitals-asked-me-sound-alarm-over-icu-beds/5240903002/