Hospitals feeling the surge in virus cases
State crosses 2,000 threshold as equipment supply issues arise
California is marking some grim milestones when it comes to coronavirus hospitalizations — as the state’s recent surge in case counts begins to threaten more and more lives.
In recent days, the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units across California crossed the 2,000 threshold for the first time. This month, UC San Francisco’s hospital saw its largest number of patients suffering from the virus ever — 28. The number of people battling the deadly disease across Bay Area hospitals has reached levels not seen since mid-April.
The increase is leading to medical equipment supply issues, taxing hospital personnel, and prompting some people to hold off on cancer screenings or childhood immunizations, a trend doctors say could lead to a resurgence in preventable illnesses. To stretch its most vital supplies, UCSF has switched from disposable to washable gowns and is closely tracking its N95 masks.
The rising numbers, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday, factored into his decision to shutter indoor dining, museums and theaters across the state, as he expressed “great caution and concern.”
“We’re starting to see in some rural parts of the state an increase in ICU use that is generating some concern,” Newsom said, noting that both Placer and Butte counties have less than 20% of their ICU capacity remaining.
After holding steady in the mid-4,000s for much of May and early June, the number of patients in California hospitals with confirmed or suspected cases of the virus has soared in recent weeks, reaching 7,895 over the weekend. While Los Angeles County alone accounts for more than 2,700 hospitalized patients, hospitalizations are also climbing in the Bay Area — more than doubling from just 353 on June 19 to 740 on Sunday.
Elsewhere, Orange County has twice as many hospitalized coronavirus patients now
“The strong surge in cases is also evident across all age groups, including those age 50 and older, which is likely contributing to the recent rise in hospitalizations and deaths.” — Infectious disease epidemiologist George Lemp
as it did for much of June, with around 800 patients in the hospital on average so far in July. And Riverside County has seen a similar increase between early June and early July, and is now reporting between 600 and 700 hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
Some of the increases in the Bay Area are due to transfer patients coming from San Quentin State Prison, where an outbreak has sickened more than 1,800 inmates, and from Imperial County on the Mexico border, where hospitals have been overwhelmed by the pandemic. However, the total number of transfers isn’t publicly tracked by the state, so assessing their impact on Bay
Area counties is difficult.
In San Jose, cases at Good Samaritan Hospital have more than doubled
from five a week ago to 12 on Monday. Across town at Regional Medical Center, which serves hardhit East San Jose and was the region’s busiest during the early months of the crisis, the number of cases has climbed from 16 to 27 during that time frame.
Still, in a sign of the different ways the pandemic is playing out in different areas, Regional’s current case count is well below the 60 or so cases a day the hospital was seeing in April.
As of Monday, the three hospitals operated by Santa Clara County — Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, O’Connor Hospital and St. Louise Regional Hospital — had 32 coronavirus patients, up from just seven on June 20. And while more than half of the system’s acute and ICU bed space is occupied by non-coronavirus patients, if there is a
surge, the system has only about 39% of its acute hospital beds available and only around 29% of its ICU beds open.
As of Sunday in the Bay Area, Santa Clara County had more suspected or confirmed coronavirus patients hospitalized — 149 — than all but Alameda County, where 187 people were in the hospital. Contra Costa County had 105 people hospitalized, San Francisco County had 94 and San Mateo County had 65 people hospitalized, including a number of San Quentin inmates at Seton Medical Center in Daly City.
John Muir Health, in Contra Costa County, Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente said they have also seen a rise in recent coronavirus hospitalizations but didn’t provide specifics.
But the hospitalization
numbers are below where they might otherwise have been had the demographics of the pandemic not shifted.
According to calculations by infectious disease epidemiologist George Lemp, former director of the University of California’s HIV/AIDS Research Program, new COVID-19 cases among young people ages 18 to 34 increased by 92% during the first two weeks of July compared with the last two weeks of June. People under age 35 now make up nearly half of recent cases, where at the start of the pandemic, older residents were hit hard.
Young people are much less likely to require hospitalization, especially locally. According to Lemp, young people ages 18 to 29 are hospitalized with COVID-19 at a rate of 19.1 per 100,000 people in Northern
California, compared with a rate of 34.7 per 100,000 nationally. It isn’t clear why. But even as case rates soar among young people, they also continue to climb among older residents, which may be driving hospitalization numbers up.
“Young people are leading this recent epidemic surge,” Lemp said. “This is a concern since they are also more frequently asymptomatic and capable of spreading the virus silently while it’s undetected. However, the strong surge in cases is also evident across all age groups, including those age 50 and older, which is likely contributing to the recent rise in hospitalizations and deaths.”