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With more COVID-19 patients in Clark County requiring intubation and breathing assistance from a ventilator, acute care hospitals are seeking to double the number of ventilators they currently have, Southern Nevada Health District officials said on Friday.
The Health District expects the demand for ventilators to go up “in the near future,” said senior health preparedness planner Misty Robinson.
There are now 681 ventilators in Clark County, about half of which are in use, and hospitals are requesting more than 600 additional ones, said Jeff Quinn, manager of the Office of Public Health Preparedness.
Out of the 2,144 people in Clark County who have tested positive for coronavirus, 583 patients — 27% of cases — have been hospitalized, according to data compiled Thursday by the agency. Of those patients, 139 have been placed in intensive care units and 84 have been intubated.
“Hospitals are reporting a flattening of incoming patients, so they’re staying at level capacities,” Robinson said. “But they’re expecting those numbers to go up.”
Similar to the situation in communities nationwide, Clark County still faces a shortage of COVID-19 tests and personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers and could soon experience a shortage of intensive care unit beds, according to health officials. The Health District and the state continue to request more resources from the federal government, but Clark County and Nevada are competing with other communities and states, some of which have many more COVID-19 cases, officials acknowledged.
Although the Health District will receive $503,000 in grant funding from the federal coronavirus stimulus package, the CARES Act, that money will only cover a small portion of Southern Nevada’s existing medical and public health needs, said Jeff Quinn, manager of the office of public health preparedness.
“It’s only a fraction of the amount of money that’s being spent to protect the public health in the community. We could always use more money,” Quinn said.
The agency has not yet determined how the CARES Act money will be used, he added. Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada said Friday that they will continue to push for more federal funding to support health care providers in the state.
At this time, private resources, including COVID-19 tests done at private labs and PPE donations from businesses and individuals, remain crucial, officials said.
While the new number of COVID-19 cases per day in Clark County is still increasing, perhaps at an exponential rate, that rate could be starting to decrease, said Dr. Vit Kraushaar, medical investigator with the health district. However, officials would need to do more rigorous analyses to definitely assess whether the number of new COVID-19 cases in Clark County is starting to flatten out, he said.
“It’s a little early to tell,” Kraushaar said.
While officials on Thursday pointed to April 19 as a potential “peak” day for the number of COVID-19 fatalities in Clark County based on one model, other models have predicted that the county’s peak number of deaths and cases could come later, Kraushaar said.
“We really have no way of knowing which model is going to be the most accurate,” he said.
Nonetheless, officials say social distancing measures have likely helped slow the spread of coronavirus. Gov. Steve Sisolak has been continuously rolling out new measures to discourage gatherings, including a ban on religious services for 10 or more people and the shuttering of golf courses, public basketball and tennis courts and swimming pools announced Wednesday.
As the Health District has started to release more demographic data on COVID-19 patients, officials said they are working to increase the accuracy of that data.
According to data released Thursday, health officials were unable to determine the races and ethnicities of 40.7% of all COVID-19 patients. For those patients for whom data was available, 21.4% were non-Hispanic white, 14.3% were Hispanic of any race, 10.82% were non-Hispanic black, 6.3% were non-Hispanic Asian, 1.6% were pacific islander, less than 1% were either American Indian, Native Alaskan or multi-race, and 4.5% were of other races.
Obtaining this information is challenging because the health district must reach out to patients and review their medical records, which takes a significant amount of time and resources, Kraushaar said.
“This becomes very difficult when we start to see hundreds of cases being reported in a single day,” he said. “We have about 50 people currently working on doing these investigations.”
The Health District is exploring new ways to reach these patients, such as contacting them via text or email, in order to determine their race and ethnicity, health status and other helpful demographic details, Kraushaar said.