Monitors

hospitals are licensed by the state to operate.

“It led to a misunderstanding by our residents that if they had a critical illness that they couldn’t go to the hospital,” Willis said.

Local health officials now adjust their daily estimate of the total number of ICU beds available in the county after consulting with hospitals. Willis said Marin hospitals are now typically staffing one ICU bed above where their current census stands.

“If they have 10 ICU patients,” he said, “they’ll staff 11 ICU beds to match the next patient.”

As a result, Marin ICU availability consistently hovers around 10%.

ICU availability became a critical data point after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Dec. 3 that he would begin issuing stay-at-home orders in regions of the state where intensive care unit capacity falls below 15%.

Willis said the pandemic has revealed how challenging it is to measure ICU availability in a meaningful way.

“The state ultimately has to come up with a clear definition of how we define this,” he said, “and then apply it uniformly across the state.”

The good news is that since the state issued its order to accept patients from other regions, pressure on

ICUs has eased some.

“The numbers are getting better,” Willis said. “The Sacramento region, which was super hard-hit, will be coming off the stay-athome order. Their ICU capacity has increased. Our ICU capacity has increased. The number of requests for transfers has decreased.”

Nevertheless, ICU capacity remained at 0% for the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions on Thursday. The Bay Area’s capacity was 7%.