Some ambulances are sitting outside Santa Clara County emergency rooms for up to seven hours waiting for a bed to open up for the patients they are carrying, according to county health officials.
The delays — which mean the waiting ambulances cannot respond to other calls — have caused the San Jose Fire Department to transport people to emergency rooms at least a half dozen times in the past week, county health officials said.
This type of backup has been already seen in the hard-hit Los Angeles area. There, ambulances have waited for up to eight hours outside a hospital before patients could be transferred to beds inside, according to the Associated Press. In some cases, doctors started treating cases inside the vehicles.
Hospitals have come under increased pressure as coronavirus cases continue to surge across the state. In Santa Clara County, 682 patients were hospitalized as of Jan. 1 — more than double the 293 reported a month earlier.
Across the Bay Area, available intensive care unit capacity dipped to 5.1% on Saturday, down from 8.5% Thursday.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, who co-chairs the board’s Health and Hospital Committee, said wait times for ambulances are not uncommon during busy times of the week or during holidays.
But they typically last no more than an hour, Simitian said — not seven, he said.
“Whatever the period of time is, it’s always a concern because by definition you have folks you want to have admitted as soon as possible, and you want to have an ambulance crew on the road as quickly as possible,” Simitian said.
The combination of New Year’s Eve and COVID may have added stress on the county’s emergency system, he said.
“When you put together New Year's Eve compounded by the COVID crisis, there are going to be some outliers that are troubling,” he said. “My understanding is they were relatively few in number — but obviously that’s cold comfort if you’re the one waiting for an ambulance.”
For weeks, public health officials in Santa Clara County — and across the rest of the country — have been pleading with Americans to stay home and stop the spread of the virus, lest the hospital systems become overwhelmed. What Santa Clara County is seeing is the manifestation of what happens when people don't heed those warnings, said James Williams, the county's counsel.
"This is the result of COVID impact on our hospital system," Williams said. "We’ve been saying for many weeks now how concerned we are with the hospitals and what that means for the ability of people to (have) access to timely care — whether you have COVID or something else."
The county's hospital system has been "teetering on the edge," since a post-Thanksgiving surge in virus hospitalizations, Williams said. He fears that another, similar surge, would greatly exacerbate what is already a problem with wait times at the county's hospitals.
"If we have another surge now, anything like what we had after Thanksgiving — it’s going to cause collapse," Williams said. Unlike March, the county cannot just make room by transporting patients to other facilities in California or another state. The county has contingency plans for how to provide "some level of support" to those who may need it during a potential surge. But, Williams warned, those contingency plans would not be "providing everyone with the level of medical care that we take for granted in the United States."
Santa Clara reported 1,784 new cases on the second day of the new year, with 689 people hospitalized, including 108 new cases. Seven deaths were added Saturday, bringing the county’s total to 747.
In a pre-holiday update for the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, county health officer Dr. Sara Cody warned: “We are truly, truly in the worst place we’ve ever been in this pandemic,” she said. “Everyone is quite tired. And this is scary. And people feel sad. But we have to just continue to soldier forward, because there isn’t anything else to do.”
This story is developing. Check back for updates.
Jill Tucker and Michael Williams are is San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com michael.williams@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker @michaeldamianw
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