SF officials are bracing for worst-case coronavirus scenario at Laguna Honda nursing home – San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco officers are begging negate and federal officers for more aid in averting a looming catastrophe on the metropolis’s 780-bed nursing house, where a coronavirus outbreak is rising.

On Monday, metropolis officers admitted the metropolis is now now not equipped to handle a surge at Laguna Honda sanatorium on its have. The metropolis has requested over 100 extra team and more tools from the negate and federal governments. Officials are quiet looking ahead to a response for plenty of their requests.

“Please acknowledge,” Supervisor Norman Yee implored negate and federal officers, as he looked squarely into the digicam all over a Monday morning news conference. “We need your aid.”

No longer now now not as a lot as two sufferers and nine team contributors on the ability — where the bulk of the residents are elderly with underlying successfully being disorders — comprise tested sure for COVID-19, with more assessments quiet pending. Since March 26, 158 team contributors and 54 residents were tested for the virus. Dozens of assessments are quiet pending, and a few frontline team contributors whinge they will now now not fetch entry to a test unless they point to indicators.

Because the cases continue to climb, consultants apprehension Laguna Honda could perhaps replicate the rampant outbreak at a nursing house in Washington negate, where the coronavirus raced thru the ability in a subject of weeks, indirectly killing more than 30 of us.

In the previous week, San Francisco has positioned two devices with rather a lot of confirmed cases on quarantine, refrained from residents from leaving the ability, and ramped up testing of team and residents. Peaceable, residents, frontline successfully being care workers and consultants convey the metropolis’s response could perhaps simply were too tiny, too unhurried.

Going ahead, although the metropolis throws all of its resources on the ability, hundreds of of us would be contaminated and hospitalized and dozens could perhaps die, acknowledged Dr. Terry Hill, medical director of Laguna Honda from 1999 to 2004. That’s largely as a end result of those that live in nursing homes are in particular at possibility of the virus, and as well require halt and actual attention and talk to with medical personnel.

“It will most likely presumably be staggering,” acknowledged Hill, who’s for the time being the COVID-19 medical director for the Alameda-Contra Costa Medical Affiliation and helping arrange the East Bay’s response to the pandemic. “We would be confronted with weeks of one loss of life after one other, which is terribly laborious on families and team.”

“Here’s a wake-up demand the Bay Assign,” he acknowledged.

Mayor London Breed and Division of Public Smartly being Director Dr. Grant Colfax step by step acknowledged Monday that they seek recordsdata from the gathering of cases to expand within the impending days and they’re making willing for a worst-case scenario. It marks a dramatic commerce in tone from correct a week ago, when officers did now now not handle that team contributors on the nursing house were contaminated until caused by newshounds.

In a March 27 letter to the U.S. Division of Smartly being and Human Products and companies, Breed made rather a lot of requests, at the side of four infection modify nurses, 25 testing personnel, 40,000 swabs for testing, 5 doctors and 30 nurses.

In the intervening time, infection modify nurses from the California Division of Public Smartly being and infectious disease physicians and epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Earn an eye on and Prevention (CDC) were at Laguna Honda’s campus as of Monday.

“We’re intensely fascinated by doing every little thing we can to supply protection to Laguna Honda from damage,” Colfax acknowledged Monday. “Nonetheless I also could perhaps simply quiet be life like and forthright, as we ogle on the recordsdata and the patterns … we know that prolonged-term care products and companies are most at difficulty for the COVID outbreak.”

Even after the first team contributors tested sure for the virus, frontline workers complained that they didn’t comprise sufficient personal protective tools to safely tend to sufferers. Metropolis officers maintained there used to be sufficient tools, on the opposite hand it had been moved to at least one other plan.

The sanatorium also acknowledged it used to be most interesting testing of us with indicators — although some of us with the virus are asymptomatic. Then, the department all straight away changed course unhurried closing week, asserting it deliberate to test about 150 team contributors who could perhaps simply were contaminated.

Nonetheless those assessments were leisurely in coming, and one successfully being care worker urged The Yarn on Monday that the metropolis quiet isn’t allowing successfully being care workers to fetch tested unless they point to indicators. The department is going thru the the same area that hospitals and doctors are going thru: a severe shortage of assessments.

Total testing, as well to tracking known contacts of contaminated of us, are crucial to stopping the unfold of the coronavirus within medical products and companies bask in Laguna Honda, acknowledged Dr. Lee Riley, head of the Division of Infectious Disease and Vaccinology at UC Berkeley’s College of Public Smartly being.

“Depending on how at this time they’re ready to enact this, they could perhaps very successfully be ready to curtail the heinous outcomes,” acknowledged Riley, noting that delays in getting diagnoses correct give the virus more time to unfold.