There were nine COVID-19 positive patients at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital on Thanksgiving, and on Friday there were 90, according to Cottage Health President / CEO Ron Werft.
The number of new coronavirus cases as well as the test positivity rate (how many tests have a positive result) are still increasing, indicating that the current boom is far from over, he said during the information session of the Department of Public Health in Santa on Friday Barbara said.
Public health officials 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 into the new year, these fears became a reality.
“During the holiday season, our numbers increased,” Van Do-Reynoso, director of public health, said Friday. “I was worried. I was afraid that if people were to meet, we would have a boom.”
As of Thursday, there were 178 people admitted to the country with COVID-19, and this week the country reported 24 deaths related to COVID-19. Some deaths occurred in December, and others occurred in early January.
Thirteen of the people who recently died of COVID-19 lived on the South Coast, 10 in the Santa Maria Valley and two in the Santa Ynez Valley.
Updated numbers were not available Friday due to a problem with the state reporting system, public health officials said.
Early in the pandemic, hospitals were concerned about shortages of personal protective equipment and ventilators, Werft said, but that is not a challenge to the current increase in patients.
Cottage now has 98 ventilators, 21 of which are used on COVID-19 patients, and a generous amount of PPE, Werft said.
The concerns are now about the capacity of beds with intensive care units in hospitals, where most diseases are treated.
There was one COVID-19 isolation unit that was in Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital during Thanksgiving, and now there are five, including two ICU units, Werft said.
One of the surgical ICU units has been converted into a unit to care for COVID-19 patients, and there is a designated ICU for non-COVID-19 patients.
Cottage has 45 crew members for ICU beds, but the right staff can increase the number to 57. There are plans to increase the number to 70 ICU beds in Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital and eight at Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital, according to Werft.
An ICU bed can only be used if there are enough staff members to monitor the patient in it, Werft said. Over the past two weeks, Cottage has typically had five to eight ICU beds available, he added.
“As we look at the growing demands for our hospitals in Santa Barbara, beds are not going to be the challenge, PPE and ventilators are not going to be the challenge,” Werft said. ‘The problem is staff members with critical care. Although we are currently staffed above what we would normally see, the ability to identify, recruit and expand to that kind of question is very challenging. ”
While training plans are underway to create more capacity to treat the growing number of patients, the need for more staff continues.
“There is a limit to what we can handle if the numbers continue to rise at this rate,” Werft said.
As hospitals across the state no longer have space, Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital has received more and more requests for transfers. According to Werft, the hospital sees two to four transfer requests every 24 hours.
To take in a transfer patient, the hospital must have adequate capacity, act at a higher level of care, and the other hospital must have exhausted all possible solutions, Werft said.
“We need to have resources, be at a higher level of care and not jeopardize our ability to weaken care for our local community,” he added, noting that only a few requests were recently accepted.
The province’s dashboard notes that the three hospitals in the country are already using 11 ICU beds to treat COVID-19 positive patients.
Lompoc Valley Medical Center and Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria are the other provincial hospitals that treat COVID-19 patients, with the majority in Santa Barbara and Santa Maria.
LVMC CEO Steve Popkin said in a weekly update on Friday that there are 12 COVID-19 positive patients.
“This patient volume in the province puts a huge strain on the hospitals and especially the patient care staff,” he said. ‘The three hospital systems in Santa Barbara County work very closely together, in collaboration with Santa Barbara County and other stakeholders, and have been able to effectively manage the situation. As difficult as it is here, there are other parts of the state that are in much more dire situations. We believe that things will soon turn around, and until we do, we will all do everything in our power to meet the needs and expectations of our respective communities. ‘
Werft said Cottage Health hopes to open a drive-by vaccination room at Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital next week for health care providers and other eligible people in the first phase.
Cottage administered the vaccine the day they arrived in the country, and has now administered about 3,400 staff members, he said.
The author of Noozhawk staff, Jade Martinez-Pogue, can be reached (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Get in touch with Noozhawk on Facebook.