UC San Francisco director of ER COVID response: The real crisis facing California hospitals isn’t Omicron cases, it’s strict quarantine rules by CHRIS PANDOLFO for The Blaze
A doctor with the University of California San Francisco hospital system is sounding the alarm on the real crisis facing hospitals: staffing shortages made worse by the state’s strict quarantine rules.
Dr. Jeanne Noble, an associate professor of emergency medicine at UCSF, explained to SFGATE that public officials panicking over the surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations are neglecting to account for incidental positives — people who test positive for COVID at the hospital after being admitted for unrelated reasons. Failing to recognize this important distinction has led reported COVID hospitalization rates to “greatly exaggerate COVID burden,” Noble, the director of COVID response for UCSF’s emergency department, said on Twitter this week.
“The real COVID crisis that our hospitals are facing is a severe staffing shortage that is compromising the quality of our care,” Noble told SFGATE.
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As currently reported, COVID hospitalization rates greatly exaggerate COVID burden. Incidental positives account for large majority of hospitalized cases in both LA and Bay Area. https://t.co/2i14ew1AkL
— Dr. Jeanne Noble (@JeanneNoble18) January 10, 2022
Her diagnosis comes as California is considering canceling elective surgeries because hospitals are inadequately staffed to care for patients, SFGATE reports. To deal with the problem, the California Department of Public Health has controversially loosened isolation and quarantine requirements for health care workers, which will allow COVID-positive and exposed staff to return to work more quickly. Staff who are asymptomatic will not have to quarantine but must wear N95 masks and as much as possible work with patients who are already COVID-positive.
These measures are being adopted in anticipation of a flood of COVID cases that public officials warn could overwhelm hospitals. But Noble thinks those concerns don’t reflect the reality of the Omicron variant.
She made her case after examining the charts of every COVID-positive patient at UCSF hospitals on Jan. 4 , discovering that 70% of them were in the hospital for other reasons. Noble said she looked at four UCSF campuses (UCSF Parnassus, Mission Bay, Mount Zion, and Children’s Hospital of Oakland) and identified 44 hospitalized patients, including adults and children, who had COVID. Of those patients, just 13 had been admitted to the hospital because of COVID.
