Santa Clara County Field Hospital Accepts First COVID-19 Patients

A field hospital at the Santa Clara Convention Center for people recovering from COVID-19 accepted its first two patients today.

The 250-bed respite center was set up about a week-and-a-half ago by the Air National Guard at the federal government’s behest to ease the impact on Santa Clara County’s 11 hospitals. Patients will be admitted by referral—with no walk-up services available. It will only admit people who test positive for the novel coronavirus.

“This is another important tool that we now can use in our fight to stop the spread of COVID-19 and save lives,” said Dr. Jennifer Tong, a Valley Med physician who’s in charge of the county’s pandemic surge plan.

The county is also working with local hotels and homeless shelters to isolate and care for people who have nowhere else to go.

“We are exploring every possible option in order to make sure all of our community members can receive care during the COVID-19 crisis,” said County Executive Jeff Smith. “But we can’t do it alone. We need everyone to follow the stay-at-home order if we are going to flatten the curve and keep our community save.”

According to the county Public Health Department, there are 286 confirmed and suspected COVID-19 patients in local hospitals.

Some 175 are in acute hospital beds and another 91 in ICUs.

18 Comments

  1. > The 250-bed respite center was set up about a week-and-a-half ago by the Air National Guard at the federal government’s behest to ease the impact on Santa Clara County’s 11 hospitals. Patients will be admitted by referral—with no walk-up services available.

    I’m skeptical.

    There is anecdotal information that suggests that there are plenty of hospital beds available, and that utilization rates are actually low.

    One explanation I have been given is that hospitals are “clearing out” non-critical patients in order to make room for the “expected surge of COVID-19 patients. It is the non-critical, non-COVID-19 patients that are being off-loaded to the “temporary hospitals” and hospital ships.

    People are aware, after many years of observing politicians and bureaucrats, that politicians and bureaucrats LOVE dramatic gestures that allow them to claim that they are “solving problems”.

    My well developed politician-watching instincts prompt me to ask:: “is it real”?

    Are the “temporary hospitals” and hospital ships really necessary? Or, are they just dramatic props for the Kabuki theatre to suggest that the politicians “really care” and are “really doing something”?

    • The hospital ship in NYC that could treat hundreds admitted only 20people the first week. A total bust.

    • The photo shows only about a foot or so head-from-head separation of the beds. So, if people are admitted with no COVID symptoms, but are actually infected, lots more people will contract the disease. Great thinking politicians ? .

      • > The photo shows only about a foot or so head-from-head separation of the beds. So, if people are admitted with no COVID symptoms, but are actually infected, lots more people will contract the disease.

        Maybe the beds aren’t for COVID-19 patients.

        Maybe they’re for the “homeless population”. Cram them close together. People want a “solution” to “the homeless problem”. Right?

        Hero politicians save the day!

        • They are not for COVID patients, bubble boy. However, if a person with another medical issue is sent there who is asymptomatic for COVDD but is in fact infected, he, she, or whatever will pass it on. The facility needs to be set up with appropriate distance between beds on all four sides. If that is not true, then we are all imprisoned in our homes for no good reason.

      • OK MR. Bubble, I had to go to You Tube, Wright in =
        (More Good News? Citizen Reporters Go & do what the media won’t)
        I don’t know why http doesn’t work.

        Your un-punked!

        • Found it by doing a YouTube search on “More Good News? Citizen Reporters Go”

          It offers a valuable suggestion: SJI “citizen reporters” should actually go to the “testing stations” and post a report of “the facts on the ground”.

          Where does SJI citizen reporter find the list of Santa Clara County testing centers?

  2. On March 16, Sara Cody and her trusted “Covid buddies” shut down the economy of the Bay Area and, later, the whole country by issuing health orders copied by all. They did not know the fatality rate, how contagious the disease, the immunity that develops, how it spreads, whether masks help or not. But they shut down the economy anyway to “flatten the curve” to prevent the healthcare system from being overloaded. They made a list of activities they called “essential” that they allowed people to engage in, others with similar effects that they arbitrarily struck down. Restaurants workers, construction workers, gardeners, cleaners—well they were screwed as not essential. After years of screaming about mental health, the County leadership just turned away from the victims with the brief lick of a contaminated finger: no matter how depressing and isolating the experience, you have to stay home. Our beautiful beaches are shut down, we can’t even go for a canoe paddle even though we may be miles away from anyone.

    Had the dire predictions of Cody and her Covid buddies been valid, we would have seen a bump up in hospitalizations. Then, as social distancing took effect, the hospitalizations should have gone down. Well, guess what, there was no bump, no spike in hospitalizations.

    Cody and her Covid buddies will gleefully say, “it worked!” That’s a lie. The real question is: Did we need to do this? Did we need to do it to the extreme that we did? If the answer is that we did not know for sure, then why did we embark on this destructive course without knowing?

    A confluence of events caused this tragedy: A divisive clown of a president who has no credibility with anyone who thinks and did not take charge, frustrated public health officers who normally work in anonymity, County Supervisors who are so trusting of the leadership (Cody, Jeffrey Smith, Counsel Greta Hanson, James Williams) that they have given up their basic functions—failing to ask any hard questions drawn from experience, a complete lack of understanding by disconnected bureaucrats about what is “essential” to life, utter lack of sympathy for those who suffer the after-effects of being forced to stay in. (What about the alcoholics, depressives, victims of domestic violence—was the cost on them calculated?)

    The damage is done. Now we need to get out of this. I hope the County is planning its exit strategy. I don’t even care if Cody and her Covid buddies take credit for flattening the curve. Let’s give them the credit. We just need this lunacy to end.

  3. Trying to post again:

    On March 16, Sara Cody and her trusted “Covid buddies” shut down the economy of the Bay Area and, later, the whole country by issuing health orders copied by all. They did not know the fatality rate, how contagious the disease, the immunity that develops, how it spreads, whether masks help or not. But they shut down the economy anyway to “flatten the curve” to prevent the healthcare system from being overloaded. They made a list of activities they called “essential” that they allowed people to engage in, others with similar effects that they arbitrarily struck down. Restaurants workers, construction workers, gardeners, cleaners—well they were screwed as not essential. After years of screaming about mental health, the County leadership just turned away from the victims with the brief lick of a contaminated finger: no matter how depressing and isolating the experience, you have to stay home. Our beautiful beaches are shut down, we can’t even go for a canoe paddle even though we may be miles away from anyone.

    Had the dire predictions of Cody and her Covid buddies been valid, we would have seen a bump up in hospitalizations. Then, as social distancing took effect, the hospitalizations should have gone down. Well, guess what, there was no bump, no spike in hospitalizations.

    Cody and her Covid buddies will gleefully say, “it worked!” That’s a lie. The real question is: Did we need to do this? Did we need to do it to the extreme that we did? If the answer is that we did not know for sure, then why did we embark on this destructive course without knowing?

    A confluence of events caused this tragedy: A divisive clown of a president who has no credibility with anyone who thinks and did not take charge, frustrated public health officers who normally work in anonymity, County Supervisors who are so trusting of the leadership (Cody, Jeffrey Smith, Counsel Greta Hanson, James Williams) that they have given up their basic functions—failing to ask any hard questions drawn from experience, a complete lack of understanding by disconnected bureaucrats about what is “essential” to life, utter lack of sympathy for those who suffer the after-effects of being forced to stay in. (What about the alcoholics, depressives, victims of domestic violence—was the cost on them calculated?)

    The damage is done. Now we need to get out of this. I hope the County is planning its exit strategy. I don’t even care if Cody and her Covid buddies take credit for flattening the curve. Let’s give them the credit. We just need this lunacy to end.

    • > A confluence of events caused this tragedy: A divisive clown of a president who has no credibility with anyone who thinks and did not take charge, . . .

      So, what expert should the “divisive clown of a president” have listened to?

      It’s quite obvious that the left/progressive/DNC/Hillary campaign/Berniecrats/”Main Stream Media” believe there is some genius out there who would have avoided the ChiCom screw-ups and announced a policy that would have provided universal good health.

      Who would that genius be?

      Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton? Joe Biden? Adam Schiff? Nancy Pelosi? Jim Acosta?

  4. Jennifer:

    It might be interesting to check in with the “Santa Clara County Field Hospital” and see how things are going.

    We are all supposing it is a beehive of medical treatment activity.

    But is it?

    On April 6, Mr. Newsroom said:

    “According to the county Public Health Department, there are 286 confirmed and suspected COVID-19 patients in local hospitals.”

    I checked the County Hospital dashboard today (April 9), and it says the number of COVID-19 patients is 285.

    How much respite is “The 250-bed respite center ” currently providing?

  5. > The 250-bed respite center was set up about a week-and-a-half ago by the Air National Guard at the federal government’s behest to ease the impact on Santa Clara County’s 11 hospitals.

    This 250 bed facility seems to be a part of the County’s 1529 bed “surge” capacity.

    It appears from the hospital “dashboard” that no more than 19 of the 1529 beds have so far been used during the “coronavirus crisis”.

    > A field hospital at the Santa Clara Convention Center for people recovering from COVID-19 accepted its first two patients today.

    It sounds like the “first two patients” accepted into the County Field Hospital were probably just ornaments. There were 1279 mostly unused “surge capacity” beds available in other hospitals in the county.

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