A North Bay hospital is among the first in the state to receive mutual aid to help treat COVID-19 patients and administer vaccines.
Petaluma Valley Hospital is taking advantage of a new system that went into effect statewide in late December that allows medical systems to ask for help from out of the area, the same way emergency officials might request additional firefighters during a major wildfire.
"We had a resource request out of Petaluma Valley Hospital for EMT and paramedic support, which we were able to fill locally and we also added additional paramedic resources from Solano County," said Bryan Cleaver, regional EMS administrator.
He said EMTs were requested to help support nurses and physicians in the hospital.
Several hospitals in Southern California have also requested mutual aid, where regional ICU capacity has bottomed out and healthcare workers are in short supply.
But Cleaver said the request from Petaluma should not be taken as a sign that the North Bay is facing the same dire situation.
"We're still not seeing evidence of Southern California-equivalent overrun, where we've reached or exceeded capacity and we have no further capacity…while we do have a bit of a spike in needs and demand, the fact that we're able to fill them through the mutual aid process may be preventing us from actually seeing the possibility of the Southern California sort of crisis."
Cleaver said they were able to staff the request locally because the region has workers to spare, a good sign that the North Bay can handle an increase in cases if needed.
