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ESCONDIDO, Calif. (KGTV) – California Governor Gavin Newsom said the state was activating the federal medical station at Palomar Medical Center in Escondido, while intensive care bed capacity was limited in several areas.
It was not immediately clear when the medical station could start accepting patients.
“We are taking a fifth alternative care site out of its ‘hot’ status, we are setting up this site, an FMS site, in San Diego,” Newsom said at an online press conference Wednesday.
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At a press conference Wednesday, Chris Van Gorder, CEO of Scripps Health, said San Diego County was not that far from running out of intensive care beds and staffing was a major issue.
“The reality is that we are facing an important situation here with our capacity and it is aggravated because in the summer, in the spring and in the summer it was a regional situation and not a national situation. ‘day we could travel. nurses, we could have registry nurses, we could hire more nurses locally, “said Van Gorder.” Today it’s a national situation and we can’t recruit people. travelers, we cannot recruit registry nurses and unfortunately a number of our health care providers are also getting sick. “
Van Gorder said the county still has 24 intensive care beds, out of about 670 available. He added that as hospitals fill up and resources are depleted, the type of care for anyone requiring hospital care will become crisis care.
The top two floors of Escondido hospital have been converted to serve as an FMS site. The site has 202 beds that can be used for patients who do not require ICU care. The site could accommodate patients from other hospitals in the county that are overwhelmed, Dr Omar Khawaja, chief medical officer of Palomar Health, told ABC 10News earlier this month.
“These could be beds where we offload some of the less sick patients from other systems so they can take care of the sickest patients; we don’t have a solid plan for that yet, ”he said.
California’s cumulative intensive care bed capacity hit 1.1% on Wednesday, the Southern California region at 0%. Three other regions were also under the state’s regional stay-at-home orders activated after one region fell below USI capacity by 15%.
San Diego County on Wednesday reported 348 cases of coronavirus in intensive care and 2,598 more cases of COVID-19.
Van Gorder said the county and hospitals predicted that hospitalizations would continue to grow and peak on January 10, 2021, with around 1,827 patients, and that ICU cases would peak on January 11, with around 483 patients.
“Today, the governor announced that the federal medical station at Palomar Medical Center will be activated. It is a developing situation. We will share more information as we have it. But we are doing everything we can to deal with the impact of the transmission of COVID, but now each of us must do everything in our power to influence the situation our hospitals are facing, ”said County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher at Wednesday’s press conference.
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