Fresno hospitals remain in COVID crisis mode, as ICU beds dwindle over Labor Day weekend
Hospitals in Fresno County and across the central San Joaquin Valley continued to see the effects of an ongoing summer surge in COVID-19 cases over the Labor Day weekend – including a crisis of capacity to handle critically ill patients in need of treatment in intensive-care units.
On Monday, hospitals in Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare counties were providing inpatient care for more than 750 patients with confirmed cases of coronavirus. That’s more than 10 times the number of cases that hospitals were caring for on July 1, before the latest upswing in cases and hospitalizations took off.
Over the same span, the number of COVID-19 patients in hospital ICU beds across the region multiplied by nearly 10 times, from 15 on July 1 to 146 on Monday.
Between coronavirus patients and people with other critical-care needs, Fresno County was officially down to as few as four ICU beds over the holiday weekend – out of 149 licensed beds in the county’s hospitals.
In the six-county region, as few as 14 ICU beds were identified as available by the California Department of Public Health on Friday – less than 5% of the 312 licensed beds in adult intensive-care units at hospitals in the Valley.
The state data indicates that since Friday, eight of the 22 licensed ICU beds at Kings County hospitals have been occupied by coronavirus patients – and all of the others are also filled, leaving none open for new patients who may need a bed for serious conditions such as heart attack, stroke or trauma.
As of Monday, the state reported 10 available ICU beds in Fresno County, two in Madera County, four in Merced County, and seven in Tulare County. No ICU beds are licensed in Mariposa County.
Local health leaders said recently the capacity figures, reported daily by the state Department of Public Health, doesn’t necessarily reflect the reality that hospitals face — that on many days, what few ICU beds that do open up are immediately filled by new patients awaiting admission from emergency rooms.
Within the past couple of weeks, Fresno County health officials have been working with hospitals to open up space for new intensive-care patients by transferring others to hospitals in other parts of the state. The out-of-region transfers have been needed because no hospitals in the Valley had any available beds to accept them.
The dwindling ICU capacity over the past week was underscored late last week when the state Department of Public Health announced special surge protocols were being put in place in the broader 12-county San Joaquin Valley, from Stockton and San Joaquin County in the north to Bakersfield and Kern County in the south.
The health order by Dr. Tomás Aragón was triggered when overall available ICU capacity in the San Joaquin Valley region fell to less than 10% for three consecutive days. The order requires any hospitals with available ICU beds to accept transfers from other hospitals in the region; if no space is available in ICUs across the region, hospitals in other parts of the state must accept the transfers.
The state will re-evaluate the region’s ICU capacity on Thursday.
Tuesday case updates
Since Friday, nearly 4,200 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 35 deaths attributable to the virus and its respiratory disease were reported in the central San Joaquin Valley.
Fresno County: 354 new cases Tuesday, 1,764 since Friday and 119,738 to date since the first local cases were confirmed 18 months ago; 24 additional fatalities over the weekend, 1,828 to date.
Kings County: 75 new cases Tuesday, 418 since Friday and 27,249 to date; five additional deaths, including three reported Monday, 271 to date.
Madera County: 119 new cases Tuesday, 284 since Friday and 19,175 to date; four additional deaths over the weekend, 254 to date.
Mariposa County: 19 new cases since Friday, 858 to date; no additional deaths, 10 to date.
Merced County: 149 new cases Tuesday, 489 since Friday and 37,951 to date; one additional death over the weekend, 518 to date.
Tulare County: 1,219 new cases over the weekend, 57,057 to date; one additional death, 872 to date.
This story was originally published September 7, 2021 at 2:10 PM.
