The latest coronavirus surge heavily impacted Santa Clara County just before New Year's Eve, where some ambulances had to wait for seven to nine hours to admit their patients into emergency rooms.
Joy Alexiou, a spokeswoman for the county’s Emergency Medical Service Agency, confirmed the long wait times.
“Right now in most hospitals we have some ICU capacity and others are more impacted, but they work together, talk to each other multiple times a day to make sure that patients get the care that they need," Alexiou said.
She says since those long wait times on Dec. 29 and 30, the wait times to check in at county hospitals have come down to just under an hour.
County data shows there are only 10 ICU beds left before capacity is reached and hospitals have to put patients in the 12 staffed “surge beds” set up in anticipation of overcrowding during the pandemic.