Local morgues are running out of space to contain those dying from COVID-19.
Three hospital morgues are completely out of space, while another four are almost full, Santa Clara County health leaders said on Tuesday.
The municipality brought three refrigerated trailers, each with a capacity for 60 bodies. Two were placed in the coroner’s office and one in the Bay Area morgue.
After this worrying news, public health officer Dr. Sara Cody announced that the county’s goal is to vaccinate 85% of its eligible population with both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine by August 1. To be eligible, vaccine recipients must be 16 years old, the age limit for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. It is estimated that there are more than 1.5 million residents eligible under this standard, according to the county.
The recommended age for the modern vaccine is 18, according to the CDC.
This means that about 13,000 vaccines need to be administered daily, every day, for the next six months and 21 days. The municipality is already far behind its goal.
By January 12, the county had vaccinated just over 52,216 people, using less than half of the 110,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine released so far.
Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, county testing officer for COVID-19, acknowledged that there are still significant barriers to achieving the high vaccination target. These barriers include changes in state and federal guidelines, uncertain vaccine availability in the future, and incomplete data on vaccine distribution for county systems.
“It would not be realistic to think that we will reach 100% of the population,” said Fenstersheib. “It never happened with any vaccine, except maybe for smallpox. So we are looking at what might be useful in trying to move towards collective immunity. “
Fenstersheib said that achieving a vaccination rate of 85% “depends on the availability of the vaccine and that nothing else goes wrong”.
County officials also noted that the county’s public health department can only dictate who receives vaccines within the county’s health care systems. Private hospitals and healthcare providers may vary from state to federal.
Santa Clara County had cumulative 84,726 COVID-19 cases and 944 deaths as of January 12. At least 1,092 of those cases and 25 of those deaths have occurred in the past few days.
The ICU’s capacity across the county was 7% on Jan. 12, including all emergency beds, according to the county’s public health department.
Over 50% of all ICU beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients, expelling non-COVID patients and postponing individuals with non-emergent health problems. The increase in cases is also affecting the county’s 911 system.
“As the number of COVID-19 patients in the ICU increased, he excluded non-COVID-19 patients,” said Dr. Ahmad Kamal, Santa Clara County Health Care Preparation Director, to county supervisors. “What this compression means is that patients with other very serious medical conditions … are not in the ICU.”
This means that care is being delayed or patients are receiving a lower level of care than providers ideally want, said Kamal.
“We are incurring a debt,” said Kamal. “We will be paying this debt for months and years, because these people will get sicker and their needs will increase. They will not go away. “
This story will be updated.
Contact Madelyn Reese at [email protected] and follow her @MadelynGReese