Watch joyous moment as hospital’s last patient leaves COVID center in North Carolina
Music, cheers and decorations marked the celebratory end of an era at a COVID-19 medical center in North Carolina.
Barbara Curtis, the last hospital patient treated at a coronavirus facility in Greensboro, went home to the beat of the song she loves the most: Pharrell Williams’ hit tune “Happy,” video shows.
The footage from Cone Health captured the joyous moment Curtis left the Green Valley hospital, flanked by an escort of clapping staff members.
“The final hospital patient at Cone Health’s COVID-19 only facility went home ‘Happy,’” Cone Health said Wednesday in a Facebook post that has since garnered almost 200 reactions.
Before she got into a car, Curtis is seen thanking the workers who treated her at the Green Valley campus, which was designed to care for coronavirus patients.
The 116-bed facility launched at the former site of Cone Health Women’s Hospital in mid-April, about a month and a half after North Carolina reported its first known COVID-19 case. The hospital served many of the more than 4,700 coronavirus patients treated in the Cone Health system, according to officials.
With the demand for hospitalizations going down, the health care provider announced last month that Green Valley would stop its hospital services. It attributed the decline to people following public heath measures.
“The increasing availability of vaccine for people 65 and older and those most likely to develop severe forms of COVID-19 will also lower the number of people needing hospital care in the weeks and months ahead,” officials said in a news release.
But that doesn’t mean we’re in the clear.
“We certainly don’t want people to get the wrong impression that the pandemic is over,” Dr. Mary Jo Cagle, chief operating officer for Cone Health, said in the release. “It is not time to throw away the masks.”
With Green Valley now just offering a outpatient antibody treatment and COVID-19 testing, officials said hospital patients have gone to other medical centers. One worker marked the transition with a tribute to the facility and progress in the fight against COVID-19.
“My health system closed our Green Valley Hospital, our hospital designated for Covid patients,” said Facebook user Sendil Krishnan. “We are doing so, NOT because Covid is over, (it isn’t, so keep wearing your masks and respecting each other), but because our numbers, like many places across the nation, have come down dramatically, in part from vaccinations and masking and staying in.”
