Huntington Hospital Intensive Care Unit 75 Percent Full

Seventy-five percent of Huntington Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit is currently occupied according to Huntington Hospital President/CEO Dr. Lori Morgan.

The hospital has 30 ICU beds, and as of Monday morning 22 of them were occupied. An additional 80-86 ICU patients could also be treated with additional staff, but according to Morgan, the hospital currently is faced with a staff shortage.

In an update to the City Council on Monday, the head of Huntington Hospital said things are “dire” at Huntington Hospital.

“We are seeing a tsunami of COVID-19 patients,” Morgan said.

“We have five times the patients we had 21 days ago.”

In total, 41 percent of the hospital’s ventilators are currently in use and four more units have been in use for COVID patients.

“We are managing but just barely,” said Dr. Kim Shriner, an infectious disease physician at Huntington Hospital.

Although the hospital is expected to receive 1,950 doses of the vaccine as early as Thursday, the city’s health director Dr. Ying-Ying Goh still called on people to follow local and national health orders.

It is not known how quickly the vaccine will be rolled out to the general population. Goh said she hoped there would be several points of access to local residents.

“We are in the most dire COVID-19 emergency since the start of the pandemic,” Goh told the City Council. “The region has an down to an alarming 4.2 percent of ICU capacity.”

Goh said the lowered capacity could mean some people may not receive access to care in emergency situations.

“We all need to be extremely concerned about our access to medical care due to the emergency. It might not be available.

In the city of Pasadena if you or I need medical care, we might not be able to be taken care of.”

Goh called on residents to only leave home for essential services, to wear a facial covering when outdoors and stay six feet apart, and not gather with people outside of the household.

After the distribution of vaccines to health care workers, skilled nursing facilities residents and long-term care staff is completed priority will then move to “essential workers,” and then to people at highest risk of severe illness from the virus, such as seniors or those with underlying health conditions.

Vaccines were shipped out this past weekend. The Centers for Disease Control will be allocating doses to CVS and Walgreens which will be responsible for sending teams into the city’s assisted living facilities.

The city remains under a state order that has forced all but essential businesses closed again.