There were nine COVID-19 positive patients at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital on Thanksgiving Day and there were 90 on Friday, according to Cottage Health President / CEO Ron Werft.
The number of new coronavirus cases, as well as the positivity rate of the tests (how many tests have a positive result), continue to increase, indicating that the current increase is far from over, he said during the meeting. Friday from the Santa Barbara County Department of Public Health.
Public Health officials had stressed the importance of not meeting during the holiday season for fear it would cause an increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, and a week after the new year, those fears have become a reality. .
“During the holiday season, our numbers increased,” public health director Van Do-Reynoso said Friday. “I was worried. I was afraid that if people got together, we would have a climb apart from a climb.”
There were 178 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the county as of Thursday, and the county has reported 24 COVID-19-related deaths this week. Some of the deaths occurred in December and others in early January.
Thirteen of the people who recently died of COVID-19 lived on the south coast, 10 lived in the Santa Maria Valley and two lived in the Santa Ynez Valley.
The updated numbers were not available Friday because of a problem with the state reporting system, public health officials said.
In the early days of the pandemic, hospitals were concerned about the lack of personal protective equipment and ventilators, Werft said, but they are not a challenge to the current increase in patients.
Cottage now has 98 ventilators, with 21 being used in patients with COVID-19 and an extensive supply of PPE, Werft said.
Now, concerns relate to the capacity of staffed intensive care beds in hospitals, where the most critically ill patients are treated.
There was a COVID-19 isolation unit operating at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital for Thanksgiving, and now there are five, including two ICU units, Werft said.
One of the ICU surgical units became a unit to care for patients with COVID-19, he added, and there is a designated ICU for patients who are not COVID-19.
Cottage has 45 staffed ICU beds, but adequate staffing can reduce this number to 57. There are plans to increase this number to 70 ICU beds at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital and eight at Goleta Valley Cottage. Hospital, according to Werft.
Werft added that the ICU bed can only be made if there are enough staff members to monitor the patient. Over the past two weeks, Cottage has generally had five to eight beds staffed with ICUs, he added.
“As we look at the growing demand from our hospitals in Santa Barbara, beds will not be the challenge, PPE and ventilators will not be the challenge,” Werft said. “The problem is the staffing of critical staff. Although right now we have staff beyond what we would normally see, the ability to identify, recruit and expand to this type of demand is very difficult. “
While there are increasing plans in place to create more capacity to treat the growing number of patients, the need for more staff remains.
“There is a limit to what we can manage if the numbers continue to rise at this rate,” Werft said.
As hospitals across the state run out of space, Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital has received more and more transfer requests. According to Werft, the hospital receives two to four transfer requests every 24 hours.
To accommodate a transferring patient, the hospital must have sufficient capacity, have a higher level of care, and the other hospital must have exhausted all possible solutions, Werft said.
“We need to have resources, have a higher level of care and not compromise our ability to provide care to our local community,” he added, noting that only a few requests have been accepted recently.
The county board notes that all three county hospitals already use 11 overload beds to treat COVID-19 positive patients.
Lompoc Valley Medical Center and Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria are the other hospitals in the county that treat patients with COVID-19, mostly in Santa Barbara and Santa Maria.
LVMC CEO Steve Popkin said Friday in a weekly update that there are 12 COVID-19 positive patients.
“This volume of patients in the county is putting a lot of pressure on hospitals and, most importantly, patient care staff,” he said. “The three Santa Barbara County hospital systems work together very closely, along with Santa Barbara County and other stakeholders, and have been able to manage the situation effectively. As difficult as it is here, there are other parts of the state that find themselves in much worse situations. We believe that things will change soon, and until they do, we will do our best to meet the needs and expectations of our respective communities. “
Werft said Cottage Health expects to open a vaccination site at Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital next week for health care providers and other eligible people in the first phase.
Cottage began administering vaccines the day they arrived in the county and has now administered about 3,400 to staff, he said.
– Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be contacted . (You need JavaScript enabled to view this email address). Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews i @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.