About 1,000 refugees need medical, nursing-home care

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Qualcomm Stadium:

Dr. Mark Horton, director of the California Department of Public Health, said there are four pods at Qualcomm Stadium providing medical care. The medical unit, akin to an urgent care clinic, had seen about 200 patients by Tuesday afternoon, including a woman in labor and patients needing eye care and medications. Some of the refugees have had to be transferred to acute-care hospitals.

The other three areas on the stadium’s second floor are treating 350 to 500 patients from nursing homes, assisted living centers and independent living facilities, said Horton, who has been there since Monday night. The nursing homes brought along medical records, medications and employees to help in the patients’ care.

“Things are basically under control and fairly well organized and fairly well resourced,” Horton said.

Nursing home residents have also been taken to Del Mar racetrack and to San Diego High School.

Dr. Cesar Aristeiguieta, director of the California Emergency Medical Services Agency, said he found 216 nursing home patients at Del Mar on Monday night, many of whom “had a fairly significant degree of medical need.” He and ambulance strike teams worked through the night to transfer the majority of them elsewhere. By Tuesday afternoon, only about 40 remained. “The idea was to get them to a higher level of medical care than could be provided there at Del Mar.”

Aristeiguieta said 200 patients were being treated at San Diego High School on Tuesday afternoon, but only 19 needed nursing home care; the rest were higher functioning. “I think in general, we have within the state of California a lot of resources. Some of the patients from Del Mar were placed in areas outside of the San Diego County area as we found suitable beds for them.”

Horton acknowledged that the elderly and infirm are at risk.

“Any unanticipated transfer like this with a patient certainly raises the risk,” he said. “Most of the nursing homes have practice plans in place on how to accomplish these transfers as efficiently and safely as possible...I think the system is designed to try to mitigate as much as possible any risk there might be.”

-- Charles Ornstein