Fresno, Valley under state surge order as coronavirus patients fill hospital ICU beds
Hospital capacities across the San Joaquin Valley, from Stockton in the north to Bakersfield in the south, have triggered a health order for “surge protocols” to deal with a shortage of intensive-care unit beds in the 12-county region.
The California Department of Public Health announced Friday that the order was activated because, on a region-wide basis, less than 10% of adult ICU beds were available for new severely ill patients for three straight days. From Friday through at least Sept. 9, hospitals in Calaveras, Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, San Benito, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tulare and Tuolumne counties must accept transfer patients from other hospitals if they have available ICU beds.
“If there is no ICU bed capacity within the region, then all general acute care hospitals in the state of California must accept transfer patients when clinically appropriate” and when directed by state emergency medical service officials, the surge order proclaims.
The health order by Dr. Tomás Aragón, California’s state public health officer and director of the state Department of Public Health, was issued in mid-August in anticipation that hospital capacities in different parts of the state could be threatened by a continuing surge in new COVID-19 cases and resulting hospitalizations.
“California is currently experiencing the fastest increase in COVID-19 cases during the entire pandemic with 23.8 new cases per 100,000 people per day,” Aragón wrote in the Aug. 16 order. “Hospitalizations have increased over 700% in the past two months and are projected to continue to increase.”
Friday’s announcement emphasized the importance of regional and state collaboration in managing hospital capacity, based on experience from previous surges in coronavirus infections and hospitalizations.
Hospitals in Fresno County and neighboring counties in the central San Joaquin Valley – Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare – have already been scrambling to handle what has been described as internal crises, with COVID-19 patients and people with other illness or injuries flooding emergency rooms.
Some of the largest hospitals in the area have imposed limits or postponements on elective surgeries that require an inpatient stay for recovery because of a shortage of beds in their acute-care units. And Dan Lynch, emergency medical services coordinator in Fresno County, said hospitals across the region have been forced to transfer intensive-care patients to hospitals as far away as Woodland and Watsonville – not because the more distant medical centers can provide greater care, but just to make room for other critically ill patients.
“In my 26 years in this position, we’ve never had to transfer patients out of our area because of sheer volume,” Lynch said last week. “That is the condition that we’re in right now; we need to make space in our hospitals in Fresno right now.”
As of Thursday, data from the state shows that 93 patients were sick enough with confirmed COVID-19 infections to be confined to intensive-care beds in hospitals across Fresno County; 10 in Kings County, nine in Madera County, 13 in Merced County and 26 in Tulare County. In all but Merced County, the numbers of coronavirus patients requiring ICU treatment were at their highest volume since January or February.
State health officials on Friday said that more than half of the adult ICU beds in the broader 12-county region were occupied by COVID-19 patients, and that the entire region was down to only 8.6% of its intensive-care beds staffed and available for new patients.
The San Joaquin Valley’s ICU availability fell to as low as 7.8% on Tuesday, the first of three consecutive days under 10% that triggered the health order.
None of the other five regions of California are in the same straits as the San Joaquin Valley. But the Greater Sacramento region that includes Alpine, Amador, Butte, Colusa, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, Sierra, Sutter, Yuba and Yolo counities was down to less than 13% of available ICU beds, with COVID-19 patients occupying 42.6% of the region’s ICU capacity.
This story was originally published September 3, 2021 at 5:51 PM.
