Fresno health officer: COVID vaccine arrival ‘bittersweet’ as deaths climb, hospitals fill
Fresno County’s top health officer called the arrival Tuesday of COVID-19 vaccine “bittersweet” as patients continued to die and hospitals struggled to staff full facilities.
Fresno County Department of Public Health received 7,800 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday.
“I think that there’s a lot of reasons to be hopeful and thankful but there’s also a tremendous amount of tragedy that we’re still hearing about,” Fresno County Interim Health Officer Dr. Rais Vohra said. “My ultimate goal is I want every single resident in the county to get a vaccine as soon as possible. As the leader of the health department, we’re just trying to buy time until that happens. For some of us, unfortunately we’re going to be too late, and that just breaks my heart.”
About 40% of the shipment already was distributed to the county’s major hospitals, and individual hospitals will coordinate vaccinating their workers who directly treat coronavirus patients.
Vaccination for hospital workers is voluntary.
Meanwhile, Fresno County on Tuesday activated a 50-bed alternate care site at Community Regional Medical Center, according to Dan Lynch, Fresno County’s director of emergency medical services. That site will likely be ready for patients by Friday and have about 30 additional staff to work with Community Regional staff. The alternate care site will be available to all Fresno hospitals.
That site was activated as Fresno hospitals’ intensive care unit availability hovered near 1.5%, or about 16 beds, Vohra said.
Vaccines
Fresno County Sheriff’s deputies assisted in the delivery and transport of the vaccine doses into special, extra-cold freezers set to minus-69 degrees. The delivery was executed successfully, Fresno County officials said. The health department shared a video of vaccines arriving to Community Medical Centers in five boxes that looked like pizza boxes. Each box contained 975 doses.
The vaccines also arrived with all the necessary equipment to administer the shots, such as syringes, personal protective equipment and alcohol prep pads.
Another shipment is expected to arrive as early as next week, said Joe Prado, community health division manager for Fresno County Department of Public Health.
The hospital workers who receive this first shipment of vaccines will receive a second dose in 21 days.
Hospitals full, short on staffing
While the hospitals fill up and make changes in their operations to accommodate patients, staff struggle to keep up.
Since Friday, 15 COVID-19 patients died in Fresno County.
Additionally, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Tuesday the state issued a waiver to increase nurse to patient ratios from 1:2 to 1:3.
While the state reports 16 ICU beds available, Lynch said that number represents a point in time. For instance, one local hospital at one point held five ICU patients in the emergency department.
“We really look at our capacity here as really having no ICU beds,” he said.
The number of staff out of work because they’re either in quarantine or tested positive for coronavirus continues to put a strain on the system, Lynch said.
Aside from the alternate care site at Community Regional, health care providers also are sending patients to the alternate care site in Porterville and preparing to open the site at the Fresno Convention Center within two weeks, Lynch said.
With the increased patient ratios, nurses are working extra hard. Vohra said the looser nurse to patient ratio OK’d by Newsom is a temporary fix.
“If things keep going the way that they’re going, we may actually have to use even more contingency resources,” he said. “We’re preparing for that moment to say we need to start using these other spaces because we’re running out of spaces in the hospital to put people.… And if we get there, we’re just hoping that we have enough resources to match the needs of that moment.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2020 at 2:49 PM.