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California Governor Gavin Newsom’s warning Thursday that intensive care unit beds are filling up resonates strongly in the South Bay.
Santa Clara County public health officials say recent spikes in COVID-19 cases have them on the verge of triggering the new stay-at-home order. The new order will be triggered if the bed capacity of an intensive care unit in a region drops below 15%.
The county already has hospitals well above 90% of intensive care capacity. Each hospital submitted an emergency plan on how to make more space.
“So this would include bringing beds that are not normally in service into service. This could perhaps include converting some non-clinical areas to clinical areas,” said Ahmad Kamal, director of health care preparedness at the Emergency operations center.
In San Jose, the Amberwood Gardens nursing facility has recorded 151 positive cases – 81 residents and 70 staff. At the Boccardo reception center, a homeless shelter, there were 60 cases in just over a week.
“When the amount of COVID increases in our community, you are going to attract more people to intensive care and you are going to have more epidemics in the communities,” Dr. George Han, deputy county public health official, told me. .
Officials say setting up surge protection facilities outside, as they did at the start of the pandemic, will be more difficult due to understaffing.
“Nursing staff are very limited and are deployed across the country, so we are very concerned about a long-term staff shortage,” Kamal said.
For now, hospitals continue to create intensive care spaces, including postponing elective surgeries.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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