COVID Pandemic: San Francisco Bay Area Hospitals Battling Steady Rise In COVID Patients
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- Hospitals across the Bay Area are preparing for a surge in COVID-19 patients as the state continues to see record numbers in new cases per day.
On Saturday, health officials said the Bay area has a little over 21 percent of its ICU capacity remaining. It's still not at the "critically low" level that 2 other regions in California have already reached.
But hospitals are seeing more patients come in. As several counties trend toward reaching the 15 percent remaining ICU threshold, the question becomes which ones can add more surge capacity beds if needed.
"It varies from one county to another and how easy it is to activate these beds, how functional they would be if they're needed, and also to be considered is the issue of how much ability to transfer patients, if need be," said Stanford School of Medicine Professor of Epidemiology Dr. John Ioannidis.
California recorded more than 25,000 new coronavirus infections Saturday, an all-time single-day high. Santa Clara County reports its remaining ICU Bed capacity is at 16 percent. Contra Costa County officials report the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 has doubled in just the past couple of weeks.
"We know that a lot of COVID transmission occurred over the Thanksgiving weekend," said Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody. "And while we can't see that yet reflected in our numbers, we do have some really warning metrics that are telling us that that transmission did occur."
"There's going to be some wobble in the numbers, but what you want to see is the overall trend and follow that," said UCSF epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford.
Health experts say it's not uncommon for hospitals to operate at 85% ICU capacity.
"It may be too tough to have a stay at home order for the entire population, if you do have spare beds and surge capacity that you can add to them," said Ioannidis.
Five Bay Area counties, San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, and Santa Clara have already announced more restrictive stay at home orders even before reaching the 15 percent threshold.
"We have very questionable data about the exact extent these stay at home orders are able to contain the epidemic wave," Ioannidis said. " We know they have other types of harms on mental health, on the economy and society."