COVID-19 continue to rise in latest surge, but local hospitals not seeing severe illness

The current surge of new COVID-19 cases is showing no signs of letting up as both local transmission rates and hospitalizations continue to increase, hospital officials and infectious disease experts say.

However, many of the cases being detected in hospitals are asymptomatic, meaning that patients are testing positive for the coronavirus after seeking hospital care for other conditions.

At Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, 25% of that facility’s 22 COVID-19 patients were asymptomatic, said Dr. Chad Krilich, chief medical officer for Providence Sonoma County. Two of those patients are being treated in intensive care units.

“I think with this particular surge, what we're seeing is fewer patients in the ICU but we are seeing patients who are COVID Positive,” Krilich said.

Krilich said during previous surges — in January 2021, summer 2021 and February 2022 — the average number of COVID-19 patients in ICU at Memorial was eight to 10. “A back-of-the-napkin calculation in our ICU census for this particular surge is fourfold less than what we’ve seen in previous surges,” he said.

Providence Sonoma County operates Healdsburg Hospital and Petaluma Valley Hospital. Krilich said there are currently four COVID patients at Petaluma Valley, none of them in ICU. Lately, he said, Healdsburg has been averaging between zero to one COVID patients.

After more than two years dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, local Providence hospitals are successfully managing COVID-19 patient volumes, Krilich said.

“This is not, thankfully, what we have seen with delta, omicron and pre-delta and omicron,” he said.

According to the latest data available, as of Monday there were a total of 37 people hospitalized at a hospital who had tested positive for COVID-19. Of these, three were in ICU.

Eight of those patients were at Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center. In a statement Tuesday, Kaiser urged everyone to get vaccinated for COVID-19, and boosted if eligible.

“Most people with COVID-19 symptoms can recover at home — we recommend staying home if you are sick, unless symptoms worsen and you are in need of medical or emergency care,” Kaiser said in the statement.

Dr. Gary Green, an infectious disease expert at Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital, said that while there are a lot of infections in the community, there are currently not a lot of people being admitted for COVID-19 illness at the local Sutter hospital.

“We have very, very few in the hospital and when we have someone in the hospital, it’s for another reason and, by the way, their COVID test was positive,” he said.

It’s standard practice for patients to be tested for COVID-19 upon admission to the hospital. Green said in most COVID-19 cases he’s seeing these days, patients are asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms.

“They have a mild cold, they thought it was allergies, they have a bit of a scratchy throat or no symptoms at all,” he said. “We haven’t had someone who’s been hospitalized with pneumonia, with hypoxia (low oxygen levels in body tissue) for a while. We had one recent patient last week but we think they were hypoxic for other reasons, like heart failure, asthma, emphysema.”

Dr. Sundari Mase, the county’s health officer, confirmed that hospital facilities appear to be managing well the current volume of patients, even as cases continue to rise. The county is currently seeing an average of 43.5 new daily case per 100,000 residents, with the rate among unvaccinated residents (113.9 cases per 100,000) nearly four times that of vaccinated people (29.3 new cases per 100,000).

“We’re steadily but slowly going up in cases rates per 100,000 per day, but we aren’t seeing the really negative outcomes, like deaths, go up,” said Mase, who is currently attending a national conference on tuberculosis in Palm Springs.

On Monday, local health officials reported the second COVID-related death this month, bringing the total to 492. A fully vaccinated man between 55 and 65, with an underlying health condition, died at a hospital May 8.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.