‘This is very dire.’ Fresno County to bring in morgue trailers, as COVID-19 deaths soar
Fresno County is already experiencing its deadliest month of the coronavirus pandemic, and doctors say they expect even more people to die in the coming weeks as COVID-19 cases continue to surge locally.
The county and its hospitals are bracing for a rise in fatalities by bringing in refrigerated trailer units to provide additional morgue space for coronavirus victims.
“We anticipate that this space is going to be used,” said Dan Lynch, emergency medical services coordinator for Fresno County. “This is a very dire subject matter to talk about, but this is the reality we’re looking at.”
Lynch and doctors spoke about the grim forecast in a Fresno County Department of Public Health video conference with reporters Tuesday afternoon.
“Essentially what my days have consisted of … in these last few weeks is seeing an amount of death that I’ve never seen before in my career,” said Dr. Patrick Macmillan, a specialist in hospice and end-of-life care with the UCSF-Fresno medical education program.
Macmillan said he received an injection of the recently-approved Pfizer vaccine. He said that while he was grateful to be among the first round of health care providers to receive the vaccine, getting the shot Tuesday morning was a “bittersweet” moment.
“The emotion I felt this morning was sadness, in addition to being grateful and excited,” he said. “The sadness is for those that have died and those that are dying, those that aren’t going to be able to get the vaccine, and for the families that I’ve talked to.”
Since Dec. 1, the Fresno County Department of Public Health has reported 165 deaths of residents within the county blamed on COVID-19. That includes 89 that were noted in a new morbidity report posted Monday by health officials. Previously, the greatest number of deaths in any month of the coronavirus pandemic was 152 in August.
“We are still trying to process several dozen more deaths that are not publicly reported,” said Dr. Rais Vohra, interim health officer with the county health department, noting that the formal reporting of deaths by the county happens when a death certificate is entered into the county’s vital statistics system.
A sobering pace of deaths
Macmillan said the numbers of new cases and deaths from coronavirus are sobering to health care professionals.
“We’re experiencing a surge right now that’s beyond what we saw in the summer, which stretched us,” he said. “If people don’t stay home for Christmas this year, we’re going to see something that’s hard for me to even imagine.”
On Monday, a data analysis published by The New York Times indicated that Fresno County had the largest rate of increase in coronavirus cases among metropolitan areas nationwide. “I believe it,” Macmillan said, based on what he sees doctors, nurses and other hospital workers coping with on a daily basis
Dr. Anneli von Reinhart, an emergency room physician at Community Regional Medical Center in downtown Fresno, added that the increasing number of hospitalizations and deaths were foreseeable.
“We are seeing the consequences of the choices that everyone made around Thanksgiving,” she said. “And the kind of exponential growth of cases, and our inability to expand any further, means we can’t handle any more than that.”
The hospital system, including emergency rooms and intensive-care units, are under intense pressure from the volume of patients – both those with COVID-19 and those with other serious conditions including heart attacks, strokes, trauma and more, she said.
Dr. von Reinhart said she received her first dose of vaccine on Monday, and described it as “a highlight of my year.”
“I think this vaccine is a ray of hope and a ray of sunshine at a time when we very desperately need it,” she said. “This is going to be a really important part of how we get out of this in the long run.”
But, she added, “the impact the vaccine is going to have on our community in the big picture is months down the line, and right now we’re still in a really tough spot.”
“We cannot stop being vigilant in any way,” von Reinhart added. “The hand washing, the social distancing, staying home and staying away from other people, wearing a mask whenever you’re around others, are absolutely critical.”
Vohra said that the new vaccines that have been approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration represent “a light at the end of the tunnel.”
But with the immense demands on hospitals, emergency rooms and ICUs, “it also feels like the tunnel is narrowing, which is terrifying,” Vohra added. “It’s just a race against time to try to get people through this tunnel as safely as possible.”
Adding more morgue space
For some patients the widespread availability of a vaccine will come too late, the doctors said Tuesday.
As new cases are straining hospitals, the rising death toll is putting a strain on morgue space in Fresno County as well.
“All of our hospitals have added additional morgue units, … refrigerator units that are holding additional morgue space in the system” Lynch said.
Lynch added that Fresno County has already installed one refrigerator trailer at the coroner’s office with a capacity to hold 50 victims, “and we are actually looking at bringing in two additional refrigerator trucks to add to the other one at the coroner’s office.”
“When we see these peaks that we’re in right now and we’re going to see in two to three weeks, we’re going to see an additional number of deaths,” Lynch said.
This story was originally published December 22, 2020 at 6:22 PM.
