Hospital capacity in Butte County

Butte County's ICU bed availability is 29%, according to California health officials.

Action News Now Christina Vitale spoke with the CEO of Enloe Medical Center, Mike Wiltermood regarding hospital capacity.

Hospitals?

Hayley according to the state's statistics butte county's icu bed availablity is at 29 percent.

The ceo of enloe tells me they've built this temporary building to triage covid-19 patients.

We wanna keep our area safe and ready for an emergency's that come through the door.

Manager, breana feistel (feye- stell), says as cases climbed throughout the summer -- enloe began planning how to expand.

Feistel: what we wanted to do was to be able to safely expand into another spce that stays heated int he winter cool especially right now in the summer mike wiltermood - ceo of enloe: people who ave respiratory problems or covid like symptoms can go and be treated more on a fast track especially if they dont require admision enloe ceo mike wiltermood says this building is a reflection of the spike in cases wiltermood: its also an indication that we really dont know how long covid is going to be with us according to state butte county has 29 percent bed availbility.

Wiltermnood: we have 36 emergency room bays and we can create more if we need to we have well over 300 potential beds for inpatient use but wiltermood told action news now he doesnt think bed capacity is going to be a problem -- he says across the county hospitals should consider how many admitted covid patients will need intensive care with a possible ventilator... and then availablilty of protective equipment and testing.

Wiltermood: all those things are gonna impact us in the event of a major surge of covid before bed capacity becomes an issue.

Wiltermood says at this point he feels pretty comfortable with enloe's surge plan.

Wiltermood: i just want out communtiy to be reassured that they are safe to come in for any healthcare that they need and they are encouraged to do that.

We wanna keep our area safe and ready for an emergency's that come through the door.

Manager, breana feistel (feye- stell), says as cases climbed throughout the summer -- enloe began planning how to expand.

Feistel: what we wanted to do was to be able to safely expand into another spce that stays heated int he winter cool especially right now in the summer mike wiltermood - ceo of enloe: people who ave respiratory problems or covid like symptoms can go and be treated more on a fast track especially if they dont require admision enloe ceo mike wiltermood says this building is a reflection of the spike in cases wiltermood: its also an indication that we really dont know how long covid is going to be with us according to state butte county has :hehele-v communti reassured that they are safe to come in for any healthcare that they need and they are encouraged to do that.

Butte county public health told me the other local hospitals recently repoterd they feel comfortable with their bed availablity.

Live in chico christina vitale action news now coverage you can count on.

There are 83 percent ventilator availibilty in butte county..

For a full breakdown of our local hospital and county data visit our website action news now dot com and click on news links.

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