We crunched the ICU numbers. When will stay-at-home order likely hit Fresno, Valley?
The key measurement that will determine when Fresno County and the rest of the San Joaquin Valley will fall under California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s broad stay-at-home orders is the available capacity of hospital intensive care units across the region.
If the region’s collective ICU capacity dips to 15% or lower, the 12 counties from San Joaquin County in the north to Kern County in the south will be subject to even stricter coronavirus-prevention limitations than what they currently face under state guidelines. Once that trigger is reached, the regional stay-at-home orders will kick in for at least three weeks, or until intensive-care unit capacities rebound.
When the order is triggered, however, is something of a moving target.
In his announcement Thursday, Newsom said he believed four of the state’s five healthcare regions would likely be subject to the orders “within a day or two,” and certainly by mid-December.
The Valley region includes Calaveras, Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, San Benito, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tulare and Tuolumne counties. Collectively, hospitals in those counties have a total of 657 licensed intensive-care beds, according to data from the California Health & Human Services Agency. Mariposa County has no intensive-care beds within the county.
Of that licensed capacity of 657 ICU beds, 99 beds would be the 15% threshold to light the 48-hour fuse on the stay-at-home orders.
Licensed beds, however, are not necessarily an accurate reflection of capacity. The number can fluctuate as hospitals put in place their own “surge protocols,” rearranging beds within hospital units to be able to accommodate a greater number of ICU patients if necessary. And the available beds also depends on hospitals having the needed staff — nurses, technicians and doctors — to treat intensive-care patients.
ICU capacity for Fresno, San Joaquin Valley
As of Wednesday, the actual percentage capacity in the region was 19.7%, according to the state Department of Public Health.
Valleywide, the state reported that a total of 141 ICU beds were available Wednesday for patients in the San Joaquin Valley. Fresno County had only 10 available ICU beds available on Wednesday, out of 149 that are licensed. In San Benito County, none of the four licensed beds were available on Wednesday.
Intensive-care capacity in the other four regions of the state on Thursday were:
Northern California (Del Norte, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Mendocino, Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama and Trinity counties): 18.6%.
Bay Area (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano and Sonoma counties): 25.3%.
Greater Sacramento (Alpine, Amador, Butte, Colusa, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, Sierra, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties: 22.2%.
Southern California (Imperial, Inyo, Los Angeles, Mono, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties): 20.6%.
On Thursday, Newsom reported that hospitalizations for COVID-19 have increased by 86% over the past two weeks. The stay-at-home orders come as the state’s hospitals brace for an expected surge of new coronavirus patients from family and social gatherings over the recent Thanksgiving holiday – on top of a winter season that is already busy for hospitals and their intensive-care units with patients with flu, pneumonia, and other serious conditions such as heart attacks, strokes and trauma.
“The bottom line is, if we don’t act now, our hospital system will be overwhelmed,” Newsom said. Besides the increase in hospitalizations, the number of deaths per day statewide has also climbed, from 14 deaths on Nov. 2 to back-to-back days each with 113 deaths this week.
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This story was originally published December 4, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
