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Feared COVID-19 hospital 'surge' is here, Valley health officers say. Tests in short supply

The Fresno Bee
Jul 11, 2020

Jul. 11--Hospitals are nearly full on top of being short staffed, and the supply of coronavirus tests is not meeting the high demand, health officials said Friday as they painted a bleak picture of current status of the pandemic in the central San Joaquin Valley.

Fresno and Madera hospitals this week saw the dreaded "surge" of coronavirus patients and decreased capacity in intensive care units, health officers for both counties said.

Fresno County's Interim Health Officer Dr. Rais Vohra said not only are hospitals at or over capacity, they're also struggling with having enough staff to treat patients.

"They are worried," Vohra said about the hospitals. "The concern level is really high."

Vohra said the issue is not a hospital issue, it's a community issue.

"It basically means that the level of care that's delivered is under threat for any condition that you have that lands us in the hospital, and that's something that all of us have to take seriously."

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Data from the California Department of Public Health on Friday showed 179 patients who tested positive for COVID-19 are in Fresno County hospitals, and an additional 50 more patients who are hospitalized are suspected to have the disease. Of those, 42 are in ICUs. In total, Fresno County had 74 ICU and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) beds available on Friday.

Fresno hospitals months ago rolled out plans and operating structures to deal with a surge, and those structures remain in place.

Kaiser Permanente Fresno Medical Center earlier this week told The Bee in a statement the hospital is seeing an increase in COVID-19 patients.

"Our staff is treating the increased number of hospitalized patients with the virus while still caring for those patients with other conditions," said Wade Nogy, Senior Vice President and Area Manager Kaiser Permanente Fresno. "At the start of this pandemic, we developed plans to make sure our facilities and staff were ready to safely and expertly treat a surge of patients with COVID-19. We have retained those expanded capabilities so we can quickly increase treatment space, staff, and supplies as needed."

County health officials are ready to open up the field hospital at the convention center when the time comes, said Dan Lynch, the county's EMS director.

"It's just watching and waiting to see when is enough and we activate it in," Lynch said. "We could potentially activate that thing within 72 hours of looking at it and get that thing moving."

It's important that patients who need hospital care get hospital care, rather than sleeping on a cot in the exhibit hall, Lynch said.

County officials requested from the state additional hospital staff, including physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, respiratory therapists,and more.

Nogy said each person plays an important role in stopping the spread of coronavirus and keeping one another safe.

"While we wait for a vaccine, we need to embrace these public health actions that focus on social distancing measures including maintaining six feet of distance and using masks to protect each other. Following these measures is crucial now to stop the rising tide of these infections," he said.

Testing

At the same time, it's become increasingly difficult to secure an appointment for a COVID-19 test at one of the three Optum sites in Fresno County. The appointments that are available are a week away, if not longer.

Vohra said test supply chains are drying up, similar to what was happening in the first month of the pandemic. Plus, the demand for tests has increased, and the high number of tests has created a bottleneck at labs processing the tests so results take longer to come in.

That's forced county test sites to revert to prioritizing symptomatic people or those who are higher risk of catching the virus.

Dr. Simon Paul, Madera County's health officer, said the testing shortage highlight the need to arm people with proper instructions and information as soon as they suspect they have coronavirus.

"Between how quickly it spreads to households and how delayed and impacted testing has become, we realized that to try and get ahead of what is causing a lot of the spread here, we really need to move upstream so that people know as soon as they have symptoms what can they do to protect their household," Paul said.

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(c)2020 The Fresno Bee (Fresno, Calif.)

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