It’s unclear how close the state is to providing personnel to relieve coronavirus-fueled critical staffing shortages at Clark County hospitals, officials said today during a weekly report.
DuAne Young, a policy director for Gov. Steve Sisolak’s office, said the state is evaluating formal requests for assistance from the National Guard and other state agencies for short- and longer-term staffing solutions as the omicron variant continues to tear through the area.
Young said that the state has to consider what’s most appropriate for the Guard, which is a relatively small force.
Dave Fogerson, Nevada’s Emergency Manager and Homeland Security Chief, said the Nevada Guard has only about 4,000 members. Those soldiers and airmen have civilian day jobs, and some are deployed overseas.
The members who work in the civilian medical field will not be called up to active duty, as that could disrupt the communities they’re already serving as healthcare workers, Fogerson said.
Young noted that the Guard was helping run some mass testing sites recently opened in response to the current surge.
“We’re working every solution and every angle that we have possible, but the National Guard isn’t the only solution and can’t be the only solution,” he said on a conference call.
State biostatistician Kyra Morgan said hospitalization in Clark County, which treats about 85% of all Nevada’s inpatients, is stable. Vegas-area hospitals have seen between about 1,600 and 1,700 COVID-19 patients a day over the past week, according to Nevada Department of Health & Human Services data.
That said, one of those days, Jan. 20, had a record-setting 1,710 coronavirus patients. The second-highest hospitalization peak, which topped out at about 1,600 patients locally, was in early January 2021, before vaccinations were widely available.
Patrick Kelly, CEO of the Nevada Hospital Association, said on the call that staffing was a challenge before the pandemic and the more-contagious omicron variant slammed hospitals inside and out. It’s been especially bad in Clark County and some rural areas.
“Hospitals are reflective of the communities that they serve and when omicron spreads through a community, the family members and friends of hospital workers become infected and eventually the hospital workers also become infected,” he said
Kelly advised residents not to go to emergency rooms for COVID testing or non-emergency care, and noted that hospitals are rescheduling even medically necessary but non-urgent procedures.
“We understand when this wave’s over that there’s also a possibility of another one coming,” Kelly said.
Morgan said she is confident that Clark County — which reported 2,823 new COVID cases today, far from the 4,870 the Southern Nevada Health District reported on Jan. 18 — has peaked in new infections. Washoe County is nearing its peak, and should start dropping as soon as next week, she added.