On the day Kern County reported the highest number of cases of its new coronavirus, several measures designed by the Board of Supervisors for long-term management of COVID-19 illness were extended.
Kern County is once again finding itself as a coronavirus hotspot. Matt Constantan, director of public health services, said during a meeting of supervisors on Tuesday that new cases have been identified in many of Kern’s skilled nursing facilities and prisons, both of which are susceptible to the rapid spread of the virus.
Of the 2,082 cases reported Tuesday, 800 are from prisons or 19 county nursing homes in the county.
However, Kern County is performing poorly across all coronavirus metrics, with significant rates of spread reported a few weeks ago.
The county is reporting a 16.9% test positivity rate, more than double the level needed to determine coronavirus to be “widespread” in the state. For every 100,000 Kern County residents, 66 66..3 new COVID cases are being identified every day as of Tuesday.
“It simply came to our notice then. They are clearly too small. “When we were in red tires, we had five or six factors from where we wanted to be,” Constantine told supervisors on Tuesday, referring to the four-tiered state system that allows for different levels of business and social activity, depending on the county. Coronavirus matrix.
The county’s hospital capacity is also showing signs of stress. As of Tuesday, 284 patients from Kern County had been hospitalized in COVID-19, with 61 in intensive care units. The county has only 4.8% capacity in its ICU, with 20 beds available.
Nevertheless, Constantan assured the board that concessions remain within the system, and hospitals are handling the influx of COVID-19 patients adequately.
“This is just as good (in hospitals),” he said, adding that a health care executive recently commented that the level of activity seen in local hospitals is not uncommon during the normal flu season. “They manage the daily crisis every day. It causes major traffic accidents. They have a number of family members who fall ill. They are good at this. They are the best at how to serve people. ”
However, supervisors approved two precautionary measures to increase contracts for additional capacity efforts. In one move, supervisors have amended the lease with Kern County Fairgrounds to allow the county to use part of the property for additional locations in an emergency if local hospital beds are occupied in the event. The lease has been extended twice and is now due to expire in June. The new amendment increases costs by 80 480,000, to a total of about 1. 1.4 million, which will come from the Federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARS) Act.
In another move, supervisors extended a second lease with the fair, allowing the county to place 15 temporary solitary units on the property, which housed sick people from COVID-19. The maximum value of this lease is now about 1 1 million.
“Believe it or not, that agreement will last all year,” Kern’s chief rations operations officer Jim Zervis said during the meeting. “It really shows the length of the epidemic that we’re just continuing to deal with.”
As part of its many dynamics, Supervisors extended the contract with Rights sourcing Inc. which was due to expire at the end of December and is now due to expire on 31 March. The agreement allows 88 travel nurses to be employed at Kern County hospitals. An event that causes a shortage.
Constantine said some hospitals have started bringing in extra nurses.
“We recognized early in the county that staffing was our area that we needed to focus on the most, and ICU nurses in particular were the area of weakness,” he said. “So we’ve continued to make it our top priority.”
You can reach Sam Morgan at 661-395-7415. You can also follow him on Twitter smorgenTBC.
.
