At an exciting press conference on Christmas Eve Wednesday, Santa Clara County health leaders pleaded with the public to cancel their vacation trips and meeting plans to help prevent new cases of COVID-19 being fired.
Hospitals in the region are in crisis due to the increase in cases, with only 35 beds remaining in intensive care units across the municipality. Eight out of 10 hospitals have fewer than five beds available. Three hospitals have less than 10 beds of any kind, said Dr. Ahmad Kamal, COVID-19’s director of health care preparation.
“To date, there were 68 patients in the emergency room waiting for a hospital bed that they didn’t have,” he said on Wednesday.
Reports from people planning to travel for the holiday have alarmed county and health leaders as the number of new daily cases has exceeded 1,200 a day, they said. The skyrocketing number of hospitalizations since Thanksgiving, when many people traveled and gathered outside the home, is straining the health care system. An increase in the number of cases after the holiday would place the system in unfamiliar territory, they said.
“If we have one peak after another, we are definitely going to break. We can’t afford it,” said county health officer, Dr. Sara Cody.
All the numbers are going the wrong way and the reality is bleak, she added. Despite pleading with people not to travel, authorities have seen a sharp increase in cases of COVID-19, hospitalizations and deaths after Thanksgiving. As of December 23, 632 people have died of COVID-19 and 631 people are hospitalized with the virus in the county; nearly 60,000 people tested positive, said county attorney James Williams.
In mid-November, a week before Thanksgiving, an average of three people died each day due to COVID-19. A month later, that average increased to almost six people a day. The county’s average seven-day positive rate on December 13 was 7.7%, the highest since the pandemic began in March. That is compared to 3.4% on November 19, a week before Thanksgiving, and 1.3% on May 27, county officials said.
“I understand that this is a very difficult message to hear. It is not the message we want to deliver on the eve of the holidays, where our tradition must come together, and the message is even more difficult to do than to hear. But we cannot emphasize the enough that this is a matter of life and death. So please don’t get together. Celebrate only with those in your home. If you have plans to travel, go home and cancel them. Cancel your travel plans. over the phone, on social media, zooming in. Prepare a meal at your home and have fun with just the people in your home. It can save a life. It will save a life and it’s very important to do, “said Cody.
If the county sees another increase that looks like Thanksgiving, “we will see a crisis,” said Williams. COVID-19 is close to being the third leading cause of death in the county this year, after cancer and heart disease.
Kamal begged people to cancel their travel and meeting plans and stay home. With the reduction in hospital resources, there is a real risk that many sick patients will not have a bed in the hospital and many more may die.
“We are talking about people on stretchers without a bed to go to; we are talking about people who do not receive hospital care. We are talking about rationing the scarce resources that our exhausted health system has left for those who will benefit the most. about dying people who shouldn’t have died. And when hospitals are at that point where they are rationing care, where they have to refuse people who desperately need their services, it is no longer just COVID, but everyone. It is about people in a car accident; it’s about people with a heart attack. It will affect us all, “said Kamal.
Although the number of cases appears to be decreasing slightly a month after Thanksgiving, it is not enough to prevent disaster if people travel again, meet and increase the increase, county officials said.
“This is the time when we want to be together, when we need to be together, but we cannot be together in person … It is not safe this year. One of COVID’s huge challenges is that it is silent. You cannot see; your loved one doesn’t seem dangerous and you can have chains of silence spreading that end up in someone hospitalized or end up in someone dying. But if each of us does our part and we’re just inside our domestic bubble, we can prevent people from dying and that’s what we should do. This is the Christmas gift that we should give each other, “said Cody.
Watch the full press conference here:
Find comprehensive coverage of Midpeninsula’s response to the new coronavirus by Palo Alto Online, Mountain View Voice and Almanac on here.