SANTA CLARA COUNTY, Calif. (KRON) - On this New Year's Eve, the health care system in Santa Clara County is stretched to the limit.
Close to 30 available ICU beds, and on any given day as many as 60-patients waiting in emergency rooms for beds. Health officials are also reporting some good news.
The good news is COVID-19 vaccinations are moving along in Santa Clara County. A cautionary tale on this New Year's Eve with the county experiencing 50 or more cases per 100,000 people every day.
"A light at the end of the tunnel for us. Some hope in the coming year,” Dr. Martin Fenstersheib said.
The last COVID-19 update of 2020 from the county of Santa Clara Health Department focused on vaccinations.
To date, the county has received from Pfizer and Moderna a combined total of 95,000 doses. The distribution will go according to CDC phased guidelines.
Santa Clara County is currently in phase 1a which includes health care personnel and residents in long-term care facilities.
"People are certainly asking when is it my turn? After we finish the health care personnel we will move to phase 1b. That includes people over the age of 75 and it will include some of the essential frontline workers such as teachers, such as law enforcement. People working in places like grocery stores. In phase 1c we will expand vaccinations again to include people who are between 64 and 74 and all those people between 16 and 64 that have any chronic conditions and the rest of the essential workers. The last phase, phase 2 will be everybody else,” Fenstersheib said.
“The good news, if there is any to be had, is that the additional pressure that was put on after Christmas was not as great as we saw after Thanksgiving,” Dr. Ahmad Kamal said.
This being New Year's Eve, the health department is urging residents to exercise some of the more of that holiday vigilance to take the strain off hospital ICU capacity which is teetering at the limit.
"It is the summation of our individual and collective decisions and actions that decides where this pandemic goes,” Kamal said.
The first vaccine dose for the phase 1a group went out in mid-December. The second dose for that group is scheduled to begin the first week of January 2021.
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