Governor Janet T. Mills (D), the first woman Governor of Maine, announced yesterday that she will deploy up to an additional 169 members of the Maine National Guard to help alleviate short-term capacity at hospitals and maintain access to inpatient health care for Maine people amid record-high COVID-19 hospitalzations. This is the second time that the Governor has dispatched National Guard members for COVID-19 duty during the pandemic.
The Governor directed the deployment of these additional Guard members to serve in non-clinical support roles at health care facilities across the state. Thje Guard members will help hospitals maintain capacity by freeing up clinical staff to focus on patient care. Their assistance will also open additional beds at nursing faciities, in swing bed units and at other “decompression sites” that accept patients discharged from hospitals.
This, in turn, will allow hospitals to safely discharge more individuals, relieving a bottleneck that wkll then allow hospitals to provide inpatient care for more people with COVID-19 and ensure delivery of health care for other serious health problems. The Mills Administration will release the deployment locations, which are being finalizled and are subject to change, later this week according to the press release issued by the Governor’s office yesterday.