Good afternoon,
I spent some time yesterday on a call with the Board of Supervisors. The County EOC, in partnership with Joby Aviation, is in the process of constructing an Alternative Care Site in Marina, which will be ready in the coming weeks. Located in a secure area at Marina airport, the large fabric tent structure is 55,000 square feet and has four sections. Shower, laundry and food trailers will be on-site. The site is being built to house patients who need hospitalization, but not intensive care. Patients at this site may require monitoring of oxygen, nursing care, glucose and vital signs. Dr. Craig Walls has been instrumental in bringing this project to fruition.
The current surge modeling projects that 33,000 Monterey County residents will be infected with COVID-19 at peak epidemic, around the beginning of June. Currently, hospitals are reporting 678 licensed beds total in the county, while the potential at the top of the surge could be over 950 — that’s at 70% compliance to the current shelter-in-place order. You can read a story summarizing the meeting here and find the slide deck, which includes surge modeling here.
The county is expecting 90-100 FEMA trailers delivered later this week. The EOC is exploring alternate housing sites at the Monterey Fairgrounds, San Lorenzo Park, King City, and additional sites near Salinas, one which will likely be at Kmart.
Today, we met with agricultural leaders, advocates and other hospitals to address COVID readiness for our ag workers. We believe this is a population that has the potential to be hit significantly harder than the rest of Monterey County by the COVID pandemic.
Lab results from 4/15/20
- Total tests - 410
- Pending tests - 24
- Positives – 20 (1 currently hospitalized, 1 expired)
- 3 PUIs in-house
If you have questions, concerns or comments about our response to coronavirus, please email ask@natividad.com. We are producing video updates this week and we will work to address them in future videos.