Manteca’s two hospitals appear to be lightest hit with COVID-19 patients.

Doctors Hospital of Manteca has the lowest number of COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit with 2. Their overall census of COVID-19 patients stands at 6, the lowest by far in San Joaquin County.

The 73-bed facility has 44 hospital beds in use including 9 overall in ICU.

Kaiser Hospital of Manteca has 14 overall COVID-19 positive patients with 5 COVID-19 patients in ICU. That is the same as Sutter Tracy Community Hospital. Both were tied Tuesday for the second lowest COVID-19 census in the county.

There are 80 patients with COVID-19 in ICU units among 236 hospitalized patients with the coronavirus currently at seven medical facilities.

Coronavirus patients account for 80 of the 131 patients admitted into ICU care countywide. The number of occupied license ICU beds is at 131 percent meaning 31 percent (or 32) of the ICU patients that require more attention due to their condition are in beds that have been converted from general hospital use.

The situation is forcing patients with other critical conditions to be transported to hospitals that have the capacity and ability to care for them.

Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Maggie Park on Tuesday told the Board of Supervisors that the state’s projections for San Joaquin County are beginning to show signs of hope as the numbers are starting to gradually decrease.  Park reported that patients in the hospital are now projected to decrease by a third by Aug. 19.

 “We aren’t out of the woods just yet, but there are some glimmers of hope,” Park said. “The latest forecasts are encouraging and are illustrating that residents are doing the right thing by wearing masks, social distancing and limiting gatherings. It is clearly making a difference and we need to stay determined and keep up the effort.”

As of 2 p.m. Tuesday, there are 5,375 people within the county that have tested positive for the virus. Many of the 5,375 plus others who have the virus but haven’t been tested to detect it have no symptoms and may never get ill but are all considered capable of transmitting COVID-19 to those that are vulnerable. That is why the state has mandated that seemingly healthy people need to wear face masks when required as well as social distance and wash hands to reduce the virus’ spread.

There have been 3,434 people that have recovered bringing the overall case number to 8,799 since March out of 760,000 county residents.

Another person has died to bring the death count in San Joaquin County to 95.

As of Tuesday there were 4,014 cases of COVID-19 in Stockton up from 3,487 a week prior.  In the past week Lodi has gone from 659 to 750 cases, Manteca from 643 to 729, Tracy from 557 to 619, Lathrop from 188 to 215, Ripon from 75 to 84, and Escalon from 52 to 55. The county reports never indicate how many in each city has recovered or how many are currently positive but instead lumps them all into one number.

Among the 7,000 plus San Joaquin County employees that includes workers at the San Joaquin Hospital where there are 36 COVID-19 patients — including 12 in ICU —  using the 170 hospital beds in use, there are currently 28 workers off work due to being ill with COVID-19. There have been 88 county employees test positive to date with a number of those already classified as recovered.

Medical team deployment

& COVID-19 tracing app

Department of Defense Medical Teams from Travis Air Force Base have deployed to San Joaquin County hospitals including 19 medical professionals to Adventist Health Lodi Memorial and another 15 medical staff to Dameron Hospital Association.

Greg Diederich, Director of Health Care Services, reported to the Board that the County has more than the required number of trained and available contract tracers the state attestation requires.

Diederich provided an update about a smartphone app to help support contact tracing and exposure notification for individuals who may have been exposed to a person who tested positive for COVID-19.  The app  created by Citizen  leverages both Bluetooth and GPS technology to support contact tracing, the proximity, and the duration of the potential contact. The app is available for free to county residents who choose to opt into the service. It will soon be launched in coordination with the City of Stockton. San Joaquin County Health Care Services provided Citizen the ability to become available in the app store so that more people could download it which could have some significant benefits if widely adopted.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com