SLO County ordered 100 ventilators for a coronavirus surge – just in the nick of time
San Luis Obispo County ordered 100 additional ventilators to get ahead of a potential shortage due to coronavirus — a crisis that some other counties are currently facing, according to the Public Health Department.
“I know it is very difficult to find ventilators right now. There is a very significant demand for them, not only in this state but in the country, and we are very fortunate to find the ones that we did,” County Administrative Officer Wade Horton said at a Thursday news conference.
The county spent about half a million dollars on the additional ventilators and has set aside a team to access the needs of county hospitals. And the hefty price tag may save hundreds of lives.
“We are very much engaged in looking at our health care system surge capacity, particularly the hospitals,” Public Health Officer Dr. Penny Borenstein Thursday.
Horton told The Tribune that instead of going through public channels and waiting for government assistance, the county made the decision to purchase the ventilators privately. He said that had the county waited until Thursday, it would have been too late and they wouldn’t have received any.
In Oregon and Colorado, Kaiser Permanente was forced to temporarily closed some clinics so it could redeploy staff and equipment to hospitals in anticipation of a surge in patients, according to the Sacramento Bee.
And the federal government said it would move 1,000-bed hospital ships into New York to deal with the new coronavirus pandemic. That followed an offer by the U.S. Department of Defense to open up its strategic supply of ventilators, single-use masks and other supplies, potentially easing a shortage of life-saving equipment.
Thirty of the additional 100 ventilators should arrive in the next 7 to 10 days, and the other 70 will arrive within a few weeks, Horton said.
Local companies like iFixIt are also stepping up to the plate to help repair medical equipment and ventilators to make sure there are enough necessary supplies.
Currently, the county has 60 ventilators and ICU beds, with 450 medical surge beds waiting if needed, Borenstein said.
As of Thursday, SLO County has confirmed 13 cases of coronavirus, and Borenstein said she expects that number to rise.
To reduce the potential spread and prevent health care facilities from being overwhelmed with a surge in patients, the county issued a shelter-at-home mandate starting at 5 p.m. Thursday.
How SLO County testing works
Along with limited numbers of ventilators and beds, the county only has the capacity to test 50 people per day for COVID-19 at its facility. Although the capacity was threatened earlier in the week and the issue has since been resolved, the number of tests performed by the county will not increase.
“We now have additional supplies that will carry us through the next few days and within those few days we expect to get additional material to continue to operate at the pace of 50 specimens per day,” Borenstein said at Wednesday’s briefing.
The county has one of 22 public labs in California that’s conducting COVID-19 testing. Staff have been running the tests since March 6. They take three to four hours to complete, and staff typically run them twice a day.
Helping to handling the processing are a higher number of private laboratories that now have the ability to test, Borenstein said, noting that three of the 13 confirmed cases were reported from private labs.
While the county has tested more than 250 people as of Thursday, Borenstein said she does not know the total number of people who have been tested by private facilities.
Hospitals, including Dignity Health facilities, are not only gathering swabs to send to private facilities out of their main hospitals, but also at their five urgent care sites along the Central Coast, according to Megan Maloney, communications and marketing director for Dignity Health. Dignity’s local properties include Arroyo Grande Community Hospital and French Hospital Medical Center in San Luis Obispo County, and Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria.
“We have daily and hourly meetings about what (do do) if we see (a sudden increase of patients) and to make sure they are well cared for at our facilities,” Maloney said. “We have our tents that have been approved by County Health for when and if we need them.”
Borenstein said that while the county expects to see more cases, some of the coronavirus patients in the area are already recovering in their homes. They will not receive a second test to confirm their virus status.
She said the Centers for Disease Control has released new guidelines saying that if a person who has been confirmed with COVID-19 shows no symptoms for 72 hours and it has been at least seven days since the onset of the illness, they can re-enter society.
The Public Health Department urges those with COVID-19 symptoms to contact their primary care doctors or urgent care centers and ask them to perform tests and send them to private labs.
Those who believe they are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms should not go to the emergency room and ask for a test, she said. They should first call their doctors or urgent care centers and explain their situations.
