Leading doctors from URMC are bringing the public up to speed with the latest on their treatment of positive COVID-19 patients.

They began Tuesday by talking about their greatest challenge.

“The information is changing on a daily basis, the volume of patients and everything we're facing is changing on an hour by hour basis. Our greatest challenge has been trying to keep up with those changes and to communicate as we consolidate around a plan, working as a team, how we communicate that across and enterprise as large as our hospital and all the hospitals we work together with,” said Dr. Paritosh Prasad, medicine chief, Hospital Medicine, URMC.

Dr. Prasad joined URMC Clinical Medicine Chief, Dr. Justin Hopkins, to talk about managing COVID-19 within the hospital.

"One this that I think has surprised [Dr. Prasad] and I is the ratio of patients that have required the intensive care setting vs. the patients that we've been able to manage on the medical floor. We expected that about 2/3 to 3/4 of our patients would be able to be managed on a general medical surgical floor and the rest being in the ICU, and so far it's been more ICU patients than we anticipated,” said Dr. Hopkins.

The doctors say, as of Tuesday afternoon, Strong Memorial Hospital has 57 positive COVID-19 patients.  Twenty-six of them are in a standard patient room area and 31 are in intensive care. They say they are learning from each of these cases information that will help them treat future coronavirus patients.

"It is a different virus and it acts differently than things that we've seen before,” said Dr. Prasad.

They give the credit to the abilities of the staff.

"The ability for all levels of people caring for these patients to rapidly adapt and really practice a very high level has been something that maybe even I'm surprised at,” said Dr. Hopkins.

These medical leaders offer optimism.

"Even though there's no proven treatment for COVID-19, it's really important to know that the way that the virus affects the body and the way that people get into trouble, we have very well developed proven treatments of how to support patients … and what we've learned from our colleagues across, not only the country, but across the world is that if we do the things that we know how to do, that for the vast majority of folks, that it will get them through this,” said Dr. Prasad.

The doctors say they have not run out of space or ventilators to treat COVID-19 patients, as they are seeing fewer cases than had originally been expected.