NEWS
‘Winter has Come’
Humboldt County’s new health officer steps in as cases continue to surge By Thadeus Greenson thad@northcoastjournal.com
T
he face was fresh but the message was familiar: Humboldt County’s COVID-19 case count is spiking at an increasingly rapid rate and may spiral out of control if residents don’t begin wearing facial coverings fastidiously when out in public. Hours before he would be unanimously voted in as Humboldt County’s new health officer, replacing Teresa Frankovich who stepped back into a part-time, supporting role with Public Health earlier this month, Ian Hoffman addressed the board of supervisors for the first time and struck a similar note to his predecessor’s increasingly dire warnings. Humboldt County, he said, had kept the virus at bay for months through compliance with health orders and aggressive testing and contact tracing efforts that quickly identified and isolated case clusters, which were long driven by travel. But the current spike, which had seen 239 cases confirmed through the first eight days of December on the heels of a record-shattering November, as the Journal went to press, Hoffman said, is entirely different. “Winter has come,” Hoffman said. “What we are seeing now is a change. … It’s no longer coming in from the outside. It’s here and it’s spread among our community. Very rapidly.” Humboldt County’s rapid escalation of cases and a corresponding increase in the percentage of COVID-19 tests that are coming back positive comes amid national and statewide surges in virus activity and hospitalizations. Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that with state hospital capacities nearing dangerous levels, he was implementing stay-at-home orders in regions where intensive care unit capacity drops below 15 percent. At a Dec. 3 press conference, Newsom said he expected cumulative capacity in the Northern California region — which comprises Humboldt and 10 other counties — to dip below that threshold within days or a week, at most. But as the Journal went to press Dec. 8, only two regions in the state had fallen under Newsom’s order and ICU capacity in the Northern California region sat at 25 percent.
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NORTH COAST JOURNAL • Thursday, Dec. 10, 2020 • northcoastjournal.com
Humboldt County, meanwhile, had eight COVID-19 patients hospitalized at the Journal’s deadline, according to a state database, including five people the county reported were hospitalized between Dec. 4 and Dec. 7. Those came just days after the county reported last week that a total of 30 people — 29 residents and one staff member — had tested positive for the virus at the Granada Rehabilitation and Wellness skilled nursing facility in Eureka. During the Dec. 8 Board of Supervisors meeting, First District Supervisor Rex Bohn invited St. Joseph Health CEO Roberta Luskin-Hawk to discuss local hospital capacity. She reported that the entire local healthcare system has worked hard to increase capacity. St. Joseph Hospital, she said, recently increased intensive care unit capacity from a dozen beds to 18, while Mad River Community Hospital has gone from four to six and Redwood Memorial Hospital has four. That makes 28 ICU beds currently available, which Luskin-Hawk said hospitals can keep open with existing staff. St. Joseph Hospital has plans to expand capacity further, if needed, she said, but it would require pulling nurses and staff from other shifts to work in intensive care. She added that the county has 38 ventilators on hand between ones purchased by the hospital, by local donors, rentals and some on loan from the Providence Health System, as well as adequate supplies of COVID treatment medications. The limiting factor, should the North Coast see a sustained surge in cases and hospitalizations, she said, will be staff, noting that hospitals throughout the state and the country will be facing similar situations and she doesn’t expect reinforcements to arrive from outside the area. Currently, Luskin-Hawk said St. Joseph is able to provide COVID-19 care and “regular care” simultaneously, though that could change should hospitalizations increase. Hoffman similarly reported that the healthcare system is not currently overrun but warned that’s a delicate balance, given the way the virus can spread exponentially. He noted that while it took Humboldt County nearly 10 months to record its first 1,000 cases, it’s on track to see the next
