YUBA COUNTY, Calif. — Yuba and Sutter County health officials issued a new public health order to try to slow the spread of COVID-19 in the counties as the only hospital in both counties gets overwhelmed with patients.
Yuba Sutter spokesperson Russ Brown says that Yuba and Sutter counties are now in a very serious situation as case counts are through the roof, hospitalizations mount every day and zero ICU beds are left with no alternative care sites to house patients with COVID-19 or people coming through the ER.
“We have serious issues here we have one hospital. One hospital serves the two counties and that one hospital has no ICU beds available bedding overall in the hospital is really stretched because of COVID-19 ,” Brown said.
That is why county public health officers are sounding the alarm and implementing their own shutdown.
Starting Monday, Dec. 7, public health officials are urging people to revert to how things were at the beginning of the pandemic by:
- Limiting activities outside of your own household
- Reverting schools to distance learning for all grades due to cases being identified in the schools that remain open for in-person learning
- No in-person dining, regardless of outdoor or indoor
- Suspend all in-person county, city and other governmental functions
“Try to stay out of the public as much as possible. We are asking people to not eat at in-person restaurants, but we are asking them at the same time to support those restaurants, go order food and take it [home] ,” Brown said.
Brown says the new public health order will help mitigate the spread of COVID-19, but they also face another challenge:
“The biggest problem we have is staffing. There may be extra beds in the hospital, but it’s having the skilled nurses, technicians and doctors and others to be there,” Brown said.
The new health order goes into effect on Dec. 7 and officials say it is voluntary and will not be enforced.
