SAN FRANCISCO
California is opening temporary field hospitals to help with overflow patients as COVID-19 surges fill intensive care units across the state.
The field hospitals will care for non-ICU patients in places such as Costa Mesa, Porterville, Sacramento and Imperial; other facilities are on standby status in Riverside, Richmond, Fresno, San Diego and San Francisco.
On Tuesday, the California Department of Public Health said available ICU capacity in Southern California was just 1.7%, down from 2.7% a day earlier. The situation was particularly grim in Riverside County, which was at zero available ICU capacity as of Tuesday. Available ICU capacity in the San Joaquin Valley was also effectively maxed out and has been fluctuating between zero and 1.6% since Saturday.
SACRAMENTO
California is scrambling to find enough nurses, doctors and other medical staff for the increasing demands of the unrelenting pandemic, with the state having so far acquired just one in 10 temporary contracted positions needed to treat surging caseloads.
Meanwhile, the state’s Health Corps, created by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration in March, has been unable to provide the help needed to make up the difference, with only a small fraction of the thousands of people who signed up for the volunteer service available to staff overloaded facilities.
To address the shortage, Newsom said Tuesday that California is “looking overseas” for additional staffing because other states are “in a similar predicament” to California and can’t spare their own healthcare workers.