Hospitals in Stanislaus County are overrun with COVID-19 patients. Most are unvaccinated
A week after hospitals in the region triggered the state’s surge protocols, medical centers in Stanislaus County were packed with COVID patients and the death toll continued to climb.
At Doctors Medical Center in Modesto, the situation was the same this week. The hospital on Florida Avenue deals with a slim intensive care unit capacity, as more COVID-19 patients arrive in the emergency department daily, some of whom will need high levels of hospital care.
“We are still seeing patients admitted with COVID-19,” said Dr. Eric Ramos, medical director of Doctors Medical Center and five sister hospitals. “Most of them are unvaccinated and they are the ones who need the highest intensity of care.”
Low vaccination rates are a commonality of the 12 counties in the San Joaquin Valley and Sierra foothills where ICU capacity fell below 10 percent last week. That triggered a state system in which hospitals with available ICU beds must accept patients from counties that run out of bed space.
Ramos said Thursday that Doctors has not transferred COVID patients due to lack of ICU availability. The Modesto hospital, which provides higher levels of care, tries to accept patients that it’s able to treat. It has declined some transfers from other hospitals based on capacity issues but not very many, Ramos said.
“Our declination rate is low,” the medical director said. On a daily basis, a hospital team looks at which patients need to stay in ICUs and which ones can be moved to a regular floor.
By staying on top of that, Ramos said, the hospital reserves a few ICU beds for patients needing heart surgeries and emergency procedures.
Since coronavirus vaccines became widely available this year, there’s a strong sense the delta variant surge this summer should have been less severe.
Community transmission, reaching as high as 54.4 per 100,000 in late August, has sent larger numbers of unvaccinated young adults to hospitals, sometimes with fatal results. About 42 percent of adults age 18 to 49 are fully vaccinated in Stanislaus County.
Ramos said 90 percent of COVID patients admitted to the hospital are not vaccinated. Some admissions are vaccinated people but their illness is usually less severe.
Ramos said some children with moderate cases of COVID illness have come to the hospital. The hospital also sees pregnant women, who are at increased risk of serious illness and hospitalization from COVID-19.
County health officials and experts have recommended coronavirus vaccination for pregnant women, saying the benefits outweigh any potential risks of vaccination during pregnancy.
Stress and overwork at Memorial
Memorial Medical Center is another hospital in the region with limited ICU capacity. Sacramento-based Sutter Health did not have a statement on the surge protocols or whether Memorial was transferring overflow COVID patients to other hospitals in San Joaquin Valley region or had ICU space for accepting transfers.
Nursing staff said the 423-bed hospital at Briggsmore Avenue and Coffee Road has averaged around 120 COVID-infected patients, including 30 in intensive care units.
Recently, staff have described an environment with frequent alarms, patients coding and a hospital morgue overfull.
“We’ve opened up two overflow ICU units,” a nurse said, adding that 30 of the 50 patients in ICUs are COVID-positive.
Only one of the COVID patients in intensive care is vaccinated, the staff member said, while the hospital has canceled non-emergent surgeries.
Another nurse at Memorial said that a third of patients at Memorial were suffering from COVID-19. Nurses were regularly calling in sick because of stress and overwork, the employee said.
COVID death toll increases
The county reported 43 COVID deaths over the first week of September. A public health dashboard added seven deaths Thursday for a two-day total of 19, pushing the total to 1,192 deaths in Stanislaus County. The county Health Services Agency does not release an age breakdown for recent deaths.
Slightly more than half the vaccine-eligible residents in Stanislaus County are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and 14 percent are partly vaccinated.
As of Aug. 30, the case rate for unvaccinated people in Stanislaus County was 62.85 per 100,000. It was 15.54 per 100,000 among vaccinated residents. The number of COVID hospitalizations rose to 292 on Thursday.
According to the county’s best data, 87 percent of COVID-infected patients hospitalized are not vaccinated and 91 percent of COVID deaths are unvaccinated people.
This story was originally published September 10, 2021 at 7:22 AM.
