Hospital, health center remain vigilant with more rain coming

Sonoma Valley Hospital and Sonoma Valley Community Health Center have not experienced any major problems due to the recent heavy rains, but remain vigilant with more storms forecast for the next several days.

“Despite the challenges posed by the burden of respiratory illnesses and the storms, Sonoma Valley Hospital has been able to continue to provide excellent care for our patients,” said Dr. Sujatha Sankaran, chief medical officer at the hospital.

Kimberly Drummond, the hospital’s chief of support services, added, “We continue to monitor the facility daily to ensure our patients, visitors and staff stay warm and dry.”

She said that in the hospital’s original design, gardens were placed in the center of buildings to allow for natural light and enable patients and visitors to access outdoor space.

“While a beautiful feature, drainage in these garden areas has posed issues in the past and impacted the first floor of the hospital with water intrusion,” Drummond said. “Mitigations have been put in place (including sump pumps) and are always evaluated prior to expected storms.

“The hospital is faring well with the current storms and the mitigations in our gardens are doing their job. We have generator backup power in the event of any unplanned outages.”

Cheryl Johnson, CEO of Sonoma Valley Community Health Center, said on Friday, Jan. 6 that it had experienced only minor issues during the rains.

“The storm drains have been well maintained, and that has been helpful,” she said. “Also, many people are either off this week or staying home, and that has been extremely helpful. We anticipate that there will be more traffic for the second series of storms and may impact staff commutes.”

She noted that historically, rains and storms sometimes have affected staff members’ commutes, partly because they live in nine different counties.

“We are prepared for power outages and for communicating with staff if there are road closures,” Johnson said.

She said that the storms are not causing an increase in COVID-19, flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) or other illnesses. RSV and flu cases have been increasing at the health center, however, while COVID-19 rates are low, but she says this could be attributed to more home testing.

“Anecdotally, we are seeing respiratory illness where tests indicate that it is not COVID, RSV or flu,” she added. “It is more like a really bad chest cold.”

Sankaran said that there is no evidence that the rains and storms have increased the burden or respiratory and other illnesses among Sonoma Valley Hospital patients, either.

More generally, she said, “Sonoma Valley Hospital has been impacted similarly to other hospitals in California, by the confluence of different respiratory illnesses impacting our community.”

In Sonoma County in general, the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 has risen from 9.9% on Dec. 20 to 12.1% on Jan 1., using seven-day averages. The number of people hospitalized for COVID-19 has risen from 11 on Dec. 25 to 54 on Jan. 5. The county had nine hospitalizations for flu on Dec. 26, compared with seven on Jan. 5.

Reach the reporter, Dan Johnson, at daniel.johnson@sonomanews.com.