As Fresno hospitals resume a normal flow, concern about COVID-19 surge grows
Hospitals in Fresno County and the central San Joaquin Valley are slowly ramping up a return to a more normal flow of medical services to the region. But a continuing increase in hospitalizations and new cases of coronavirus still have the potential to put hospitals under stress to handle a sudden surge.
As Valley counties all restore some level of economic activity, Fresno County’s interim health officer Dr. Rais Vohra expressed dismay Friday that a significant number of residents are disregarding health advisories to wear masks in public and maintain physical distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
It’s a problem that Vohra said threatens the fragile progress that the Valley has made in containing the virus and the respiratory disease it causes.
“The hospitals are telling us they’re back to their normal census,” Vohra said in his Friday update to reporters. Area hospitals, he added, “have no more reserve than they do on an average day around this time of year.
“That’s really concerning because if they do need to go into surge, if they do need to add capacity very quickly, they’re going to be challenged to do that,” he added.
Ensuring sufficient hospital capacity, staffing and resources to handle a sudden increase in coronavirus cases is one of the assurances that Fresno County and other counties had to make to the state Department of Public Health before they received approval to allow an expanded range of retailers, restaurants and services to begin reopening under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s roadmap to economic recovery from COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.
But that capacity can be tenuous, especially when residents don’t take seriously the health risks of COVID-19 — particularly for senior citizens or residents who suffer from a range of other underlying medical conditions and are considered more vulnerable to serious illness from the coronavirus.
““Unfortunately, we’re challenged by our hospital capacity here in the Central Valley,” Vohra said. “We’re challenged by the fact that some of these messaging things have not really taken root and people are not staying as safe as they could be.”
A potential ‘crisis mode’
Countywide, hospitals in Fresno County have a total of 1,229 general acute-care beds, plus an additional 149 beds in intensive-care units, according to licensing data from the state Department of Health and Human Services.
The total number of occupied beds at local hospitals plummeted as the state put a moratorium on non-emergency or routine procedures to prepare for an anticipated tsunami of COVID-19 cases, similar to what happened in other places around the world. California and the Valley largely dodged that circumstance.
But an increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations, just as more people are using hospitals for more cases that don’t involve the coronavirus, “is not something we can ignore at this point when hospitals tell us they’re basically getting filled and they’re at a point where a sudden surge in numbers even over the course of a week could really push us into a crisis mode,” Vohra said. “That has to be taken very seriously.”
As of Wednesday, the most recent information available from the state Department of Public Health, 71 patients confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus were hospitalized in Fresno County, including 19 in intensive-care units. Those patient numbers went up every day between May 20 and May 27.
Besides the confirmed patients, 48 other people — including three intensive-care patients — were in Fresno County hospitals as of Wednesday as “suspected” COVID-19 patients, being treated for symptoms consistent with the disease but were not confirmed through testing.
“Every step that all of us take to help protect the most vulnerable members of our community will ultimately protect all of us,” Vohra added. “We all need the hospitals. We all need our medical system to work for anything, for non-COVID-related care.”
Across the six-county region, health officials reported 95 confirmed new cases of coronavirus on Friday, as well as seven deaths. That boosts the cumulative number of confirmed infections to nearly 4,700 since early March, including 132 deaths.
Hospitalizations in Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, and Tulare counties amounted to 67 confirmed COVID-19 patients, including 21 in intensive-care units; 12 other suspected coronavirus patients were also hospitalized as of Wednesday.
This story was originally published May 29, 2020 at 7:16 PM.
