Stanislaus County will go into COVID lockdown on Sunday night
Update, 9:20 a.m.: Stanislaus County will fall under a stay-at-home order beginning Sunday night after the San Joaquin Valley Region’s intensive care unit capacity fell below 15%, a local health official said.
The California Department of Public Health reported that the 12-county region’s ICU adult bed capacity dropped from 19.7% on Thursday to 14.1% late Friday. Gov. Gavin Newsom said earlier this week the order would go into effect when a region’s ICU capacity fell below 15%.
The governor’s overall order takes effect Saturday at 12:59 p.m. Regions falling below the governor’s 15% threshold would have to move to stay-at-home 24 hours later.
Dr. Julie Vaishampayan, health officer for Stanislaus County, confirmed Saturday morning the order will go into effect on Sunday at 11:59 p.m. as a result of the latest count.
She confirmed she was informed Friday night by the CDPH.
The stay-home order will last for at least three weeks.
The order will close bars, wineries and hair salons and require retail stores to cut back to 20 percent capacity. Nonessential social gatherings will be prohibited; in addition, indoor recreation, playgrounds, salons, movie theaters and live-audience sporting events will be closed.
Along with Stanislaus County, San Joaquin, Merced and Tuolumne county residents face the same order.
The Southern California region also fell below 15%.
Five Bay Area counties are jumping ahead of Newsom’s directive and shutting down sectors this weekend to stem a wave of infections. The Bay Area’s ICU capacity is at 21.2%.
We’ll have more on this breaking story throughout the morning.
(Read Marijke Rowland’s story on local impacts)
Original story: Stanislaus County officials, anticipating a new stay-home order from Sacramento to reduce the coronavirus surge, are waiting for the next shoe to drop.
In the meantime, the county recorded 398 new cases Friday following a week of case increases that threaten to saturate hospitals with sick patients. The county had 1,560 new positive cases from Monday to Friday alone.
County officials said the best guess for when Gov. Gavin Newsom will impose the new stay-home order in the San Joaquin Valley region is two to seven days.
Thursday, the state announced regional orders as a new strategy for battling the COVID-19 surge. The available capacity in hospital intensive care units in the five regions of California will determine when the orders are issued for each region.
The stay-home restrictions will apply to Stanislaus when ICU capacity falls below 15 percent in a 12-county San Joaquin Valley region. The capacity was at 19.7 percent Thursday, the latest figures posted by the state.
Along with Stanislaus, the designated region includes San Joaquin, Merced, Calaveras, Tuolumne, Mariposa, Madera, Fresno, San Benito, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties.
The order will close bars, wineries and hair salons and require retail stores to cut back to 20 percent capacity. Nonessential social gatherings will be prohibited; in addition, indoor recreation, playgrounds, salons, movie theaters and live-audience sporting events will be closed.
Stanislaus County’s five hospitals had 4.4 percent of its ICU beds available for adults Friday. But the state order won’t go into affect until the collective ICU capacity is lower throughout the 12-county region.
“We haven’t heard of any timeline,” said Kamlesh Kaur, a spokesperson for the county Health Services Agency. “Since this depends on the region, there’s no way of gauging when that decision would be made.”
Chief Executive Officer Jody Hayes said the county has asked the state how the regional numbers are formulated and how often they’re updated.
“Hospitals may change the availability of ICU beds each day as they implement surge planning when necessary,” Hayes said in an email. “This is very difficult to predict into the future for just one county, and in this case we are combined with 11 other counties into one region.”
The Fresno Bee reported the region needs to maintain about 100 ICU beds out of a total 657 in those counties to stay above the 15 percent threshold. A state-reported 141 ICU beds were open in the Valley region as of Wednesday.
Stanislaus County’s data dashboard showed a drop in COVID-positive hospital patients Friday from 221 to 205, including 45 patients in intensive care. Only five ICU beds were available for patients.
Health experts fear a combination of patients with seasonal flu and severe coronavirus symptoms could overrun hospitals. But virtually no influenza has appeared yet, one physician said.
Modesto hospitals see uptick in COVID-19 patients
Local hospitals, which had 124 COVID-confirmed patients two weeks ago, acknowledged a sudden uptick in coronavirus patients. Thus far, it hasn’t been as severe as the huge surge in July when ICU bed capacity was exceeded, though an additional surge from Thanksgiving Day gatherings could be due next week.
“Whether we will get into the sort of crunch we did in July remains to be seen,” said Dr. Kanthi Kiran, medical director of the Memorial Medical Center emergency department. “I’m concerned about the holiday season and what it could mean to hospitalization rates.”
Kiran said a regional shut down should be guided by facts, but a temporary order would be wise if intensive care and hospital bed capacity nears saturation. She said a “bob and weave” model of policies in the coming months could slow COVID transmission until vaccines are widely available.
Dr. Silvia Diego said primary care practices like hers in Modesto are seeing more patients seeking care for COVID-19 symptoms. She said a regional plan of moderate shutdown orders tied to ICU capacity is a sound one.
“The last thing you want to do is overwhelm the health care system and have people die because they couldn’t access health care,” Diego said. “That would be devastating. There are always the what ifs that weigh heavily and (health care providers) shouldn’t have to triage who gets the resources.”
Five Bay Area counties are jumping ahead of Newsom’s directive and shutting down sectors this weekend to stem a wave of infections. The Bay Area had the most ICU capacity (25 percent) of any of the five designated regions and wasn’t expected to reach the 15 percent threshold until late December.
Bay Area health officials said swift action was necessary.
In other regions, the greater Sacramento area had 22.2 percent ICU capacity, Northern California had 18.6 percent and Southern California had 20.6 percent.
Stanislaus hospitalization rate is lower than the state’s
State health officials say that a review of pandemic data over months shows 12 percent of new coronavirus cases result in hospitalizations two to three weeks later.
Dr. Julie Vaishampayan, health officer for Stanislaus County, said in a presentation Tuesday the county’s data reveals a 6.7 percent hospitalization rate. A fairly large percentage of county residents infected with the coronavirus are younger. About 6 in 10 are people age 44 or younger.
Krista Deans, a spokeswoman for Doctors Medical Center of Modesto, released a statement saying the hospital has been preparing for the surge of critical patients.
“Given the recent increase in hospitalizations, we are closely monitoring the census in our hospital and will make rapid adjustments as needed. We commend our team of trained professionals who are working valiantly to ensure our preparedness as we continue caring for our community,” the hospital’s statement said.
The hospital urged community members to protect themselves and others by wearing a mask in public, using hand hygiene and practicing social distancing.
The Sacramento Bee contributed to this report.
This story was originally published December 5, 2020 at 5:08 AM.
