Approximately half of the patients at a Kaiser Permanente hospital in San Jose, California are either confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases, according to a hospital vice president.
"Our San Jose facility in California actually has almost half of the hospital filled either with COVID-confirmed or persons under investigation," Dr. Stephen Parodi told the Journal of American Medical Association (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."
Parodi, a Kaiser executive VP, is an infectious disease expert and national incident commander for the company's COVID-19 response.
Santa Clara County is currently the hardest-hit area in the state in terms of fatalities, which currently stand at 17 - whole total case count is 459. There are 3,166 cases in California as of this writing. In terms of infected, Los Angeles County is the worst-hit, with 662 cases and 13 fatalities.
Based on Oakland, Kaiser has 12 million patients and 39 hospitals, as well as 706 medical offices across the US. They also operate in Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Georgia, Washington D.C., Virginia, Maryland and Hawaii.
The Los Angeles Times has summarized the rest of Parodi's interview (emphasis ours):
Younger adults also unable to breathe on their own
It’s not just the elderly who have deteriorated clinically, Parodi said; it’s also younger adults who...