About half of Kaiser Permanente’s San Jose hospital has been filled with patients confirmed or suspected to have the new coronavirus, a hospital vice president said in an interview with a medical journal.
There have been so many patients that Kaiser San Jose has had to boost its staffing, Dr. Stephen Parodi, a Kaiser executive vice president, infectious disease expert and incident commander for the health system’s COVID-19 response nationally, told the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
“Our San Jose facility in California actually has almost half of the hospital filled either with COVID-confirmed or persons under investigation,” Parodi told JAMA. “So we’ve literally had to revamp the hospital to make sure that we’ve got enough capacity from a personnel standpoint. Because to provide the care to these patients requires resource intensive personnel.”
Silicon Valley has been one of the areas hardest hit by COVID-19. As of Tuesday, Santa Clara County had the highest numbers of deaths of any county in California, with 16 fatalities. The county reported 375 cases, second to Los Angeles County, which has 662 cases.
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