Bay Area's Stay Home Order Likely To Remain As ICU Capacity Falls

BAY AREA, CA —The Bay Area's intensive care unit capacity has fallen below 1 percent, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday, which means the region is likely to remain under the state's Regional Stay-At-Home Order.

Approximately 0.7 percent of the 11-county greater Bay Area region's ICU beds remain open, according to state public health data. Once ICU capacity reaches 0 percent, the region will then direct patients to its surge capacity of additional ICU beds.

Although the region's status will be formally declared by state health officials on Tuesday, the Bay Area will not be able to exit the order until its four-week ICU projection shows a a capacity of greater than or equal to 15 percent.

Statewide, hospitalizations due to COVID-19 have risen 6 percent over the past two weeks to 21,668 while ICU admissions have increased 13 percent to 1,868 as of Sunday.

"That's among the smallest increases we've seen over a two-week period in some time," Newsom said.

In the Bay Area, ICU capacity has been on a downward spiral since it fell below the 15 percent threshold in mid-December, triggering the state's stay-at-home order.

That order will almost assuredly be extended, Newsom said Monday during a news conference.

According to Newsom, the state has deployed nearly 1,900 state and federal staff members to health care systems throughout the state to tend to the surge of cases, which has kept ICU capacity in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley at 0 percent for several days.

The rise in hospitalizations and ICU admissions has also come with a rise in deaths, with an average of 476 coronavirus-related deaths confirmed each day over the last seven days, according to Newsom.

And the death toll has also been surging within the Bay Area.

Last week, Sonoma County received a refrigerated trailer to serve as a temporary morgue in anticipation of an increase in COVID-19 deaths.

San Bernardino, Monterey, Los Angeles and Imperial counties have also received trailers from the state's Office of Emergency Services.

"Most of the requests have come from the areas that have been hit the hardest and either they need the extra storage, or they anticipate that they will need the extra storage very soon," a spokesperson for the OES said Friday.

Meanwhile, Newsom reiterated the state's goal to administer 1 million more vaccine doses by the weekend.

The state plans to recruit additional medical practitioners such as pharmacists and dentists as well as the National Guard to adminster vaccines so it may accelerate the rollout.

Some 2.4 million vaccine doses have been shipped to the state's counties, local health jurisdictions and health care systems as of Sunday, Newsom said.

To date, 783,476 of those doses have been administered.

Bay City News contributed to this report.

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