Sacramento region’s ICU capacity falls below 15%. COVID stay-at-home order coming
The Greater Sacramento region will be placed under the state’s strictest shutdown order Thursday night, just before midnight, state health officials said.
The new restrictions will require all restaurants to close outdoor dining, and will force barbers, hair salons and nail salons to shut doors. Retail outlets will be required to limit customers to 20% capacity at a time. Residents will be asked to remain at home except to go to essential jobs or to do basic chores.
The restriction will be in place for at least three weeks — stretching from Friday through Christmas Day to at least Dec. 31 if ICU capacity improves.
The restrictions apply to 13 counties in Northern California: Alpine, Amador, Butte, Colusa, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, Sierra, Sutter, Yolo, and Yuba.
Sacramento Health Officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said she believes the shutdown is necessary to quell the fast-rise in cases in the Sacramento area, but said she hopes the restrictions can be lifted in January, if people comply, and as vaccines become available to the public.
“It is important that everyone take it upon themselves for at least the next three weeks to comply ... in an effort that can be effective in relieving pressure on our health care workers and hospital resources,” Kasirye said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Our hope is this will be the last time we will be asking people to sacrifice,” Kasirye told the county Board of Supervisors Tuesday meeting, referencing the fact that limited supplies of vaccine could be on the way as early as this weekend if federal emergency use authorization is granted to the Pfizer vaccine.
The Greater Sacramento area will become the third of five California regions to fall under the new shutdown orders, issued two weeks ago by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions are already under the most strict mandates.
The new restrictions are being imposed in an effort to keep hospitals, notably intensive care units, from being overwhelmed with patients during what has been a month-long surge in infections and increased hospitalizations.
The trigger, set by Newsom, is when ICU units in a given region fall below 15% available capacity. The California Department of Health Services reports the Sacramento region ICU capacity number has slipped to 14.3% after hovering between 19% and 22% over the past week.
The San Joaquin Valley region, which includes 12 counties centered around Fresno, has hit 4.2% ICU capacity Wednesday, according to state data.
The Southern California region also passed the threshold during the weekend, and now has an ICU capacity of 9%, according to state data. Several counties in Bay Area region, despite maintaining a relatively high ICU capacity of 20.9%, decided to adhere to the new restrictions preemptively. The North State region has so far avoided further restrictions with 27.1% capacity.
NorCal counties react
The news was hardly a surprise. Officials in Yuba and Sutter counties had already asked their residents to follow the stricter rules last Friday in anticipation of an order coming.
Yolo County implemented a modified version of the order on Friday, allowing restaurants to continue outdoor dining. Now Yolo will tighten its order, in compliance with the state’s mandate and, and will limit restaurants to takeout and delivery service, said county spokeswoman Jenny Tan.
El Dorado County officials said they had already launched their emergency operations center to coordinate COVID-19 response among local hospitals. Barton Memorial Hospital in South Lake Tahoe has tapped a National Guard medical strike team to help.
El Dorado officials pleaded with residents to do their part to reduce infections and help local hospitals deal with rising patient numbers.
“Whatever one’s personal opinion may be about the state’s authority to apply industry and personal restrictions, it’s indisputable that we are in a new wave of serious cases of COVID-19 and it is having an impact on our health care delivery systems,” county spokeswoman Carla Hass said. “Our hospitals have begun using overflow areas and utilizing additional respiratory, ICU and emergency room staff, including those from the National Guard, to meet the needs of our communities.”
Nevada County officials said the state has informed them it plans it send out a Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) to cellphones of residents of counties in the Greater Sacramento region who will be under the regional stay-at-home order.
Restaurant owner laments shutdown
Phil Perry, owner of two Sacramento-area restaurants, Southpaw Sushi and Burger Saloon, said the shutdown could be devastating, forcing him to end outdoor dining.
“Both restaurants have been doing outdoor dining. Both restaurants continue to struggle with sales down roughly 60%,” he said. “We are desperately trying to keep people employed and keep the doors open.
“This latest shutdown — somebody’s going to pay. Either the landlords can’t survive or we can’t survive. Something’s got to give.”
Crystal Young, owner of Vintage Rose Salon & Spa in Auburn, said her business has already suffered through numerous shutdowns, and she was bracing for another closure.
“I’ve been working every day this week to get my clients in, just in case,” she said.
The timing couldn’t be worse. “I just ordered $3,000 worth of product because it’s our busiest time of the year,” she said.
She said she thinks some hairstylists “will try to do house calls because it’s Christmas season.” But she will abide by the shutdown order.
“We will survive it. We have to,” she said.
Some salon owners wondered why some businesses can stay open but theirs are being shut down again.
Missy O’Daniel, who owns Allure Salon & Spa in downtown Sacramento, said state officials are ignoring the stringent health and safety protocols that the cosmetology industry has had to follow even before the coronavirus pandemic struck.
“That the malls can be open — that doesn’t make sense,” she said. “We are a much safer operation. We are being treated unfairly.
“The salon industry is never going to come back from this,” she added. “It’s going to take the majority of us out.”
COVID-19 hospitalizations, ICU rates set records across region
State data updated Wednesday show that five of the six Greater Sacramento counties with the most hospital beds in the region broke all-time highs for COVID-19 patient totals: Sacramento (398 confirmed cases hospitalized), Placer (158), Butte (63), Yolo (26) and El Dorado (24). Those figures have all soared steadily since early November.
For confirmed COVID-19 cases specifically in ICUs, Sacramento and Placer counties had the highest totals in the region at 85 and 23 patients, respectively.
El Dorado shattered its previous high with 13 in intensive care Wednesday, leaving just four beds available. Adventist-Rideout, the lone hospital in the Yuba-Sutter bi-county area, had a record-high 11 in ICUs with three beds left available. Yolo had 11 virus patients in intensive care with just two such beds remaining at its two hospitals.
The state’s regional stay-at-home order is triggered by available staffed ICU capacity rather than COVID-19 cases in ICUs, COVID-19 cases in general hospital beds or overall hospital bed capacities. With that said, virus patients who are hospitalized but not in an ICU almost certainly pull away additional staff, space and resources hospitals would ideally want to have ready for ICU cases, those most critically ill with COVID-19.
The bulk of the region has also fared very poorly in recent weeks in terms of its infection totals and test positivity.
Sutter County, in the state’s most recent tier list data update posted Tuesday, led all 58 counties with more than 70 new cases per 100,000 for the survey week ending Nov. 28, and was second-worst in test positivity rate at 21%. Its sister county Yuba was fourth-worst in positivity at nearly 18%.
As a result, patients have flooded into the Yuba-Sutter bi-county region’s only general acute care hospital, Adventist-Rideout, for both general acute and ICU care.
“The state’s Stay-at-Home order underscores that the rapid rate of COVID-19 transmission is leading to severe stress on our healthcare system,” bi-county public health officer Dr. Phuong Luu said in a statement. “Although ICU beds in much of our region remained above that 15 percent mark up until this week, the ICU at Yuba-Sutter’s only hospital has been full ... for a couple of weeks now.”
Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado and Yolo all had test positivity rates between 10% and 12%, compared to the statewide average of 8.4% for the most recent survey week available. The World Health Organization recommends a rate of 5% or lower before reopening an economy.
Typically, it can take up to about two weeks for a diagnosed case to end up in a hospital bed, for infections severe enough to require hospitalization.
This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 11:06 AM.