The Martha’s Vineyard Hospital said Tuesday that it would not halt routine procedures or treatments at the facility after an order from Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday curtailing elective procedures statewide, as a post-Thanksgiving spike in coronavirus cases continues.

“For now, our message is this: it is business as usual for our patients and their care, and we urge everyone not to defer their care,” hospital CEO Denise Schepici said at a hastily oragnized press briefing Tuesday.

One day earlier at an emotional press briefing, Governor Baker said halting elective procedures in hospitals would take effect Friday as he lamented the statewide spike in cases that has occurred since the Thanksgiving holiday and described the current rise as a second surge. The governor said the curtailment would free up beds and staffing at hospitals throughout the state, which have reached 70 per cent capacity in the Boston area.

The state has consistently reported more than 4,000 cases per day since early last week, doubling case totals at the pandemic’s peak in April.

“Since Thanksgiving, we have seen a significant uptick in case counts and hospital admissions,” Governor Baker said. “Every option is on the table if infections and hospitalizations continue to climb,” he also said.

The Martha’s Vineyard Hospital restarted almost all nonessential procedures in June, beginning with a broad reopening process in early summer.

Responding to an email from the Gazette Monday, a spokesman for the hospital initially offered no specifics as to what the rollback will mean on the Island.

But hospital officials offered more clarity Tuesday, saying during their own briefing that because the hospital had significant capacity and beds available, and rarely performed any elective inpatient procedures, they would stay the course and not stop any of their current treatments or procedures.

Ms. Schepici said the hospital is focused on ambulatory outpatient care and only performs about two orthopaedic inpatient procedures per week, which are considered essential due to chronic patient pain. In explaining the decision not to curtail any procedures or treatments, she added that the hospital has 21 beds, and has averaged only nine patients in those beds over the past few weeks, as well as a very small number of Covid-19 patients. She also said that the hospital could curtail those procedures at any time.

“The governor’s order is more focused on the Boston hospitals to preserve capacity, so there is some discretion on the in-patient side for us,” Ms. Schepici said. “Preventative procedures such as mammograms and colonoscopies can and should continue. We have noted in past briefings that it is so important for folks not to put off your care because that can only lead to more serious health issues down the road.”

State Health and Human Services secretary Mary Lou Sudders said during the governor’s Monday briefing that the shutdown on elective procedures came after days of discussions with hospitals throughout the state and was in response to steadily rising case tallies and virus hospitalizations. Ms. Sudders did add that she hoped mammograms, pediatric visits and other outpatient services would continue, similar to the first phase of the health service reopening process in May.

“Unlike the spring, when we stopped everything, we are curtailing inpatient elective treatments and procedures that impact inpatient capacity. So staff and beds,” Ms. Sudders explained. “Ambulatory outpatient surgeries can continue.”

Hospitals have lost billions of dollars since the pandemic began, after statewide shutdowns forced facilities to halt lucrative surgeries and procedures for months on end. Although most have since picked back up, the stoppage has hurt year-end budgets and forced layoffs across hospital systems.

Partners Healthcare, which owns the Vineyard and Nantucket hospitals and is now known as Mass General-Brigham, laid off hundreds of staff across its system over the summer, including 11 administrative positions at the Vineyard hospital. Hospital CEO Denise Schepici also took a 25 per cent pay cut. The hospital, which has a $100 million operating budget, reported losing nearly $1 million per week during the height of the pandemic.

The hospital currently has no patients hospitalized with the virus and has not had to use surge capacity, although it has had at least four Covid-19 in-patients in the past two months. At least one other patient has been transferred off-Island in critical condition. All patients have been discharged in good condition.

At the briefing Tuesday, Ms. Schepici said that the decision to continue all treatments was not in defiance of the governor’s order because the hospital essentially functions as an ambulatory outpatient surgery center.

“If you read the actual language [of the order], the governor, as well the DPH gives latitude to hospitals not to defer cases that may be life saving, preventative or, so long as you have hospital capacity and you don’t have bed issues,” Ms. Schepici said. “It really kind of leaves a broad spectrum of discretion at the at the hospital level.”

Ms. Schepici did say that the hospital would re-evaluate their treatment options if stricter regulations came down from the governor, or if case numbers and hospitalizations rise, creating capacity issues at the facility.

Since reopening in the summer, the hospital has consistently requested that patients not put off regular care, a theme Ms. Schepici continued to hammer home on Tuesday.

“If things get worse, and the governor really tightens up the orders more, we’ll follow the guidelines. But I still want to stress, it is still business as usual at this unusual time,” Ms. Schepici said.

Meanwhile, in a daily coronavirus case update Monday, health agents said the Island had reported an additional 16 new Covid-19 cases since Friday, with nine tested at the hospital and seven at TestMV — the Island’s comprehensive asymptomatic testing site. Three of the new cases were reported on Saturday, nine on Sunday and four on Monday.

Although the hospital website reported 16 new coronavirus cases tested at their facility between Friday and Sunday, Tisbury health agent Maura Valley said in an email that the numbers from the health agent report were accurate regarding new cases, with the discrepancy coming from a mixture of repeat tests and dating issues.

“The numbers noted on this report for the hospital are correct and have been confirmed by the MV Hospital lab,” Ms. Valley wrote.

The Island has now had 350 patients test positive through a laboratory confirmed test, with more than three quarters of the cases coming since Oct. 25. Testing continues to expand on the Island, with TestMV and the hospital administering nearly 35,000 tests since the pandemic began. There are currently 64 tests pending at the hospital and 1,332 from TestMV. The hospital tests symptomatic patients and their close contacts for the virus.

Statewide, the Department of Public Health continued to report near-record case tallies over the weekend, with 4,747 new patients on Sunday. There are now 1,416 patients in the hospital with Covid-19, the highest number since May, and 298 in intensive care units.

The DPH also reported 48 new deaths on Sunday, bringing the statewide total to 10,763 since March.