Fresno, Merced and Valley stay-at-home order extended, as COVID-19 surge continues
The regional COVID-19 stay-at-home order affecting Fresno, Merced and the San Joaquin Valley has been extended while the demand in hospital intensive care units exceeds capacity, according to California’s top health official.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said earlier in the week the extension was likely because of the strain already placed on ICU units.
The official word on the extension came Tuesday from Dr. Mark Ghaly, state secretary of Health and Human Services. Ghaly said the order will remain in place until ICU bed availability in the San Joaquin Valley is at or above 15 percent.
The San Joaquin Valley region has a rate of 97.5 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people, and a transmission rate of 1.13. Any rate higher than 1 is too high, Ghaly noted.
“They will remain under the order for the time being,” he said. “We will continue to monitor those (numbers) daily.”
Ghaly said the daily calculations on ICU capacity, infection rates and other hospital statistics gave health officials a four-week projection used to determine when to lift the order, Ghaly said.
The San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions remain the furthest from reopening, followed up by the Bay Area and Inland Empire. Only Northern California is not held to the order.
Fresno County has reported 0% bed availability as of last week. As of Monday, there were eight beds available for a region with more than 1 million residents.
Merced County had six staffed and available ICU beds through Monday. Fifty-three people who tested positive for the virus remain hospitalized, according to health officials.
The six-county region that makes up the central San Joaquin Valley — Fresno, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced and Tulare — reported 4,329 new coronavirus cases and 29 deaths Monday. The number may be skewing high because most of the counties hadn’t reported since before Christmas Eve. There have been 140,765 total coronavirus cases and 1,510 total deaths across the Valley through Monday.
More than 570,000 of the state’s 2.16 million all-time cases for the 10-month health crisis have been reported in the past two weeks, according to the California Department of Public Health. The statewide total for confirmed patients in hospital beds is creeping toward 20,000, including more than 4,200 in intensive care units.
As the state’s COVID-19 death toll heads toward 25,000, officials have recorded an average of more than 230 deaths a day over the past two weeks — nearly 100 higher than the peak moving average during the summer surge.
Hospitals around the state are preparing for potential crisis capacity, which Ghaly said leads to a rationing of care. The hospitals themselves determine their status and then can use ethical standards of fairness to decide who will be treated.
California Department of Aging Director Kim McCoy Wade said that decision cannot be made on a slough of designations, including age, race, sexual orientation, immigration status, incarceration status and several other demographics.
“Medical decisions are primarily grounded in the likelihood of surviving in the near term,” she said.
This story was originally published December 29, 2020 at 12:42 PM.
