Governor Stitt along with Interim Commissioner of Health Lance Frye, MD and hospital CEOs provided a coronavirus update on Tuesday.
Officials said Oklahoma hospitals can handle the rise of coronavirus cases in the state.
Governor Stitt said Oklahoma is increasing the flex beds in hospitals. For example, Oklahoma City metro will see an increase in beds by 125 percent, said Stitt.
Stitt said, should Oklahoma experience a worse case scenario in regards to COVID-19, there are options, such as, limiting non-emergency surgery to open up more beds at hospitals.
CEOs from OU Medicine, Mercy Hospital, Norman Regional Health System and OSU Medical all expressed their appreciation to be a part of this new hospital surge plan.
Interim Commissioner of Health Lance Frye said hospital infrastructure is strong to keep treating cases and, at this time, less than 10% of positive coronavirus cases are hospitalized.
Frye also provided an update on the positive cases for Oklahoma.
Frye said they found a backlog of 820 new coronavirus cases in the system, making the new total positive coronavirus cases in the state, 27,147.
Frye said the system they have been using to provide daily coronavirus data was not created to handle a pandemic. It has crashed several times over the past week. Now, the state health department is using a 'patch system' until they are able to get a new system in place.
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