Fresno-area hospitals face ‘internal disaster’ as COVID cases, staff exposures mount
UPDATE: Kaweah Health Care in Visalia announced Wednesday evening that it called off its two-day internal emergency, or “code triage,” after opening a new expansion of its emergency department.
Original story:
More than 600 people across Fresno County and the central San Joaquin Valley are in hospitals with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19, a number that continues to climb as new infections multiply in the region.
The influx of coronavirus patients, in addition to an already heavy load of patients with other illnesses or conditions that require hospitalization, is putting a strain on medical facilities just as they have a growing number of employees who are unavailable to work because they’ve either been exposed to the virus or have tested positive.
According to the state Department of Public Health, Valley hospitals were treating 566 people with confirmed COVID-19 infections on Tuesday. Of those, 99 were sick enough to be treated in intensive-care units.
Also in hospitals were 38 other patients who had symptoms consistent with coronavirus disease but for whom testing had not yet confirmed the diagnosis.
The volume of COVID-19 patients is more than double what it was on Aug. 1.
County by county around the Valley, the numbers of hospitalized coronavirus patients Tuesday were:
- Fresno County: 310 confirmed cases, 327 total, including 56 in ICUs.
- Kings County: 65 confirmed cases, including seven in ICUs.
- Madera County: 24 confirmed cases, 31 total, including seven in ICUs.
- Mariposa County: Six confirmed cases.
- Merced County: 41 confirmed cases, including 12 in ICUs.
- Tulare County: 126 confirmed cases, 134 total, including 18 in ICUs.
Of 312 licensed ICU beds at hospitals across the six-county region with more than 2.3 million residents, all but 28 were filled on Tuesday – the smallest number of available beds for critically ill patients in the Valley since mid-February. The most acute shortages were in Kings County, where no ICU beds remained as of Tuesday, and Madera County, which had only two ICU beds available.
At many Valley hospitals this week, patients are stacking up in emergency rooms waiting for other patients to be discharged from inpatient beds.
At Kaweah Health in Visalia, CEO Gary Herbst said this week the hospital was under enough strain to force leaders to declare a “code triage” or “internal disaster” on Monday, when about 160 patients overflowed the emergency department.
“It really reached what we could consider to be a crisis situation,” Herbst said. More than 60 of those waiting in the emergency rooms needed to be admitted to the hospital, he said, but the hospital’s beds were already full with other patients and there was no place to admit those waiting until others could be discharged.
Kaweah Health leaders called other hospitals in central California in hopes of finding one to which patients could be transferred to ease the strain in Visalia. “Unbeknown to us, all of them had also declared internal disasters,” Herbst said. “Literally there was not a hospital in the Central Valley that was capable of accepting a transfer.”
By Tuesday, the situation had abated somewhat, with 41 patients in the emergency department waiting for a bed to open up.
Few of the patients clogging Kaweah’s emergency rooms on Monday and Tuesday were coronavirus patients – a testament to the volume of patients with other serious conditions. Still, the hospital was dealing with 99 confirmed COVID-19 patients on Tuesday, including 15 in intensive-care units and on ventilators to help them breathe.
‘In the midst of the pandemic again’
By contrast, a month ago there were only four coronavirus patients in the Visalia hospital.
“We find ourselves right back feeling like we’re in the midst of the pandemic again,” Herbst said.
Madera Community Hospital spokeswoman Sherrie Bakkie expressed a similar sentiment. There were 17 patients in the hospital Wednesday with confirmed COVID-19 cases, including five in the ICU; five more patients were symptomatic but awaiting test results to confirm a coronavirus diagnosis.
“We’d be busy here even without COVID,” Bakke said Wednesday. Between COVID and other conditions, a shortage of staffing because they’re isolating for exposure or positive COVID tests, “it’s pretty crazy right now.”
Fresno’s largest hospital organization, Community Medical Centers – operators of Community Regional Medical Center in downtown Fresno and Clovis Community Medical Center in Clovis – reported a total of 226 confirmed coronavirus patients hospitalized at its facilities, with 173 staff unavailable to work because of COVID exposure or positive tests.
Saint Agnes Medical Center in north Fresno had 74 hospitalized COVID patients on Wednesday, with 34 of the hospital’s staff off from work. And the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in central Fresno reported 58 coronavirus patients, with eight staffers affected by the virus.
Another large Fresno hospital, the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, does not provide figures on its coronavirus patients or staff effects, citing health-care privacy concerns.
Adventist Health, which operates hospitals in Hanford, Tulare, Selma and Reedley, reported 77 patients across its system on Wednesday: 63 in Hanford, including seven in intensive care; 10 in Tulare; and four in Selma.
Cases at state hospitals
Acute care hospitals serving the public aren’t the only ones feeling the effects of COVID-19.
State hospitals that provide psychiatric evaluation and mental-health treatment of criminal offenders and inmates in the prison system, including those found not competent for trial or found not guilty by reason of insanity, have reported dozens of cases among patients and staff over the past couple of weeks.
At Coalinga State Hospital, 23 patients tested positive for coronavirus over a 14-day period through Tuesday – the largest number among five state hospital facilities in California. Those cases bring to 538 the total number of patients who have had COVID-19 since May 2020, the second-highest case volume among patients in the system.
Of the Coalinga cases, 21 patients have died from the disease – also the largest number of patient deaths among the five hospitals.
Eighteen hospital staff at Coalinga have tested positive over the past two weeks, driving the total staff infections since May 2020 to 492.
This story was originally published August 19, 2021 at 10:03 AM.
