Hospital space tight, numbers growing

OROVILLE » With one day left until Christmas, the statewide surge of coronavirus cases are being confirmed at a steady pace in Butte County.

When the week began, Chico seemed close to approaching the all-time high in surges seen one week prior, the week of Dec. 14-18 (when 899 new coronavirus cases were reported). Cases have grown at a steady pace of 129 cases per day on average.

As of Wednesday there are 6,584 cumulative cases since March. There are now 919 Butte County residents with active cases in isolation, including 44 residents who are hospitalized. No new deaths have been reported.

The outbreak at Butte County Jail has grown, with 71 positive in- custody inmate COVID-19 cases, a jump since Monday by 15 cases. There are six inmate COVID-19 tests still pending. The Butte County Sheriff’s Office has conducted 316 tests on staff members, with a total of 22 staff cases of COVID-19 to date.

There are 88 total COVID-19 positive cases hospitalized in the county, including the 44 Butte County residents, according to the state’s official dashboard for COVID-19 tracking. Overall, the Greater Sacramento region which Butte County sits in has 15.6% ICU availability left.

ICU space at Enloe is holding at a total of six positive patients with three in Oroville Hospital ICU beds and three at Orchard Hospital in Gridley. Butte County has seven open ICU beds — Enloe has five ICU beds remaining, while Oroville and Orchard each have just one left.

Chico was briefly ranked

13th in the nation Monday by the New York Times in a list of fastest growth of cases in metropolitan areas (areas with more than 50,000 people) with the greatest number of new cases, relative to their population, in the last two weeks.

Because of the fear of surges after Christmas if people continue to gather in numbers seen over Thanksgiving, health care workers in multiple cities are imploring people to cancel family

gatherings. Butte County physicians and medical personnel have also asked people to wear masks and stay home to prevent further overwhelming of the state’s hospital capacity.

California has recorded a half- million coronavirus cases in the last two weeks, averaging almost 44,000 newly confirmed cases a day, and in one month could be facing a caseload of nearly 100,000 hospitalizations, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s top

health official said Monday. Newsom is quarantined for the second time and said he will likely to extend the current stay-at-home order for much of the state during the week of Dec. 28.

Butte County Public Health Department will not be releasing any new updated information on COVID-19 cases until Monday, after the Christmas holiday.