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At least 233 staff from two major San Francisco hospitals, most fully vaccinated, tested positive for the coronavirus this month, and most, according to a hospital official, involved the highly contagious Delta variant.
Some of the cases were asymptomatic, most involved mild to moderate symptoms and only two required hospitalization, officials said. The infections were determined to be related to Delta, as most of the samples in San Francisco were tested for the variant, which is now dominant in the city.
About 75 to 80 percent of the more than 50 infected staff at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital have been fully vaccinated, hospital chief medical officer Dr Lukejohn Day said in an interview on Saturday. The University of California, San Francisco Medical Center said in a statement on Friday that 153 of its 183 infected staff had been fully vaccinated.
The UCSF medical center statement said two of the infected staff had to be hospitalized. None of the infected San Francisco General staff were hospitalized and most had mild to moderate symptoms, Dr Day said. The asymptomatic cases were discovered through contact tracing.
Without vaccination, Dr Day said, the hospitalization rate would be much worse.
“We’re concerned right now that we’re seeing a boom here in San Francisco and the Bay Area,” Dr. Day said. “But what we’re seeing is largely what the vaccine data has shown us: you can still catch Covid, potentially. But if you get it, that’s okay at all.
On July 11, San Francisco ordered that workers in high-risk workplaces, including hospitals, be vaccinated by September 15. The UCSF statement said the hospital “is doubling down on our efforts to protect our staff.” This includes requiring all employees and interns to comply with the new UC system-wide Covid-19 vaccination mandate, with limited exceptions for medical or religious exemptions. ”
Staff at both hospitals continued to wear personal protective equipment, Dr Day said. But the number of staff infections reported in July is about as high as during the peak of the winter wave.
“We’re nervous that we could potentially overtake it,” Dr Day said.
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