‘We’re begging you.’ Fresno doctor urges people to wear masks as COVID crisis worsens
Fresno County’s hospitals and health care workers are feeling the effects of caring for sick and dying COVID-19 patients over the past 18 months of pandemic.
As a result, the continuing strain on the medical system from the summer surge of infections prompted an urgent plea to the public Friday from the county’s top doctor.
“We’re begging you” to wear face masks to reduce the transmission of the novel coronavirus and its highly contagious delta variant, interim Fresno County health officer Dr. Rais Vohra said in a briefing with reporters.
While it is a relatively small step that people can take, he added, “this is the best way for us to help decompress our hospitals and obviously help keep you safe.”
Fresno County’s hospitals have more than 400 people receiving inpatient treatment for COVID-19, including more than 90 who are sick enough to require treatment in intensive-care units.
Both in Fresno County and across neighboring counties in the central San Joaquin Valley, the number of confirmed and suspected coronavirus patients in hospitals is more than double what it was four weeks ago.
Between COVID and non-COVID patients, hospitals – and the intensive-care units for the most seriously ill patients – are at or above their capacity, Vohra and emergency medical services coordinator Dan Lynch said.
With school back in session, businesses reopened since mid-June, and more large events in both indoor and outdoor venues, new coronavirus cases continue to increase. That includes 482 new confirmed infections reported Friday by the Fresno County Department of Public Health and almost 3,500 so far this week.
“We are seeing extraordinary levels of transmission whenever people are gathering indoors,” Vohra said. “We know people have to work, we know kids have to be in school, we know you have to run your errands. All of those can be made so much safer if you choose to wear a mask.”
The three-day Labor Day weekend – a final hurrah of summer parties and family gatherings – brings the potential to prolong or worsen the ongoing surge of cases. “We’re very worried whenever a holiday weekend triggers the kind of gatherings and celebrations that can lead to more transmissions,” Vohra said.
Lynch said he’s hearing from incident command leaders at Valley hospitals that they’re “bracing for another bump that could continue to overwhelm them” in the wake of the Labor Day holiday. “They know families will get together, there are going to be parties, because it’s the last big holiday of the summer,” he said.
The summer and fall are also bringing larger events that attract thousands of people into close quarters where the virus can take advantage of opportunities to spread, whether indoor concerts or events at places like the Save Mart Center or Selland Arena, or outdoor events such as high school or college football or minor-league baseball games.
“Large gatherings, whether they’re outdoors or indoors, especially indoors but even outdoors when you have a really dense crowd, will drive transmission, especially with this highly contagious delta variant,” Vohra said. “This really likes to spread whenever people gather.”
But the county is too overwhelmed with new cases to be able to know for sure whether any large outbreaks can be traced back to particular concerts, events or games. “We’re extremely challenged with the amount of contact tracing that we’re able to do,” Vohra said, and the current focus is on high-risk and vulnerable settings including hospitals, skilled nursing centers, large employers and schools.
“If a general healthy person comes down with COVID, unless they interact with one of those sectors or is hospitalized, it’s going to be really hard for us to trace back exactly where they caught it, or if they spread it to a bunch of other people,” he said. “Anywhere you go, you just have to assume that someone in that crowd is probably infected, has not yet felt the symptoms ... but if you get within breathing distance of them and they’re not masked and you’re not masked, you’re both at higher risk.”
“That’s why it makes sense to just mask all the time when you’re indoors and even when you’re outdoors in a big crowd; we’re recommending masking at those events as well,” Vohra added.
Masks have become a highly contentious issue for many people in the community, including among some elected officials and parents who have protested against requiring masks for children, including school-age kids under the age of 12 who are not yet eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine.
It’s unlikely that Vohra will issue a health officer order requiring masks aside from the existing state requirement for people who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 to wear masks anytime they’re in an indoor business or venue. The mask requirement appears to be largely ignored in many places even though almost half of Fresno County’s one million residents have yet to receive even one dose of vaccine.
“We continue to work through different mechanisms that we can do to intensify masking in the county,” Vohra said. “Either way, it’s encouraged and expected.”
“If you want to know how you can make sure your loved one has a bed in a hospital tonight if they have a heart attack, then wear a mask,” he added. Using masks to decrease the spread of the virus among residents “results in increased bed capacity at the hospital.”
This story was originally published September 3, 2021 at 2:33 PM.
