On Monday, more than 120 people used the drive-thru testing site at Southwest Memorial Hospital – the most people the hospital has tested in a day.

Last week, health officials reported 70 new positive cases, representing a positive-test rate of 16%, said Kent Aiken, Southwest Memorial Hospital’s chief of medicine and a physician with the county health department.

Kerri White-Singleton, chief operating officer of the Southwest Medical Group, said Monday that the hospital has seen an increase in the number of COVID-19 patients that show up in the emergency room and require hospitalization.

Aiken and White-Singleton spoke Monday at the Mancos school board meeting. The board decided to keep in-person learning instead of switching to online instruction, like Montezuma-Cortez schools.

White-Singleton also warned about the possible loss of some hospital services during a coronavirus surge.

If beds at the hospital are taken up by COVID-19 patients, the hospital is less able to provide medical services to someone in a car crash or with broken bones. Those patients are then flown to other hospitals, White-Singleton said.

Many of the new cases are not asymptomatic.

Lindsay Roth of the Montezuma County Public Health Department Public said 90% of the new cases are now “very symptomatic.”

“It’s hitting people hard,” she said.

ehayes@the-journal.com