Local hospitals are at capacity as Covid-19 cases from Thanksgiving start showing up.

The county’s four hospitals have reached their capacity due to Covid-19, doctors told the Monterey County Board of Supervisors on Dec. 8, with reports of canceled surgeries and people waiting for more than a day inside an emergency room because no bed was available inside the hospital.

“Our capacity is zero,” said Martha Blum, infectious disease expert at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. She anticipates worse days are to come.

“We are just starting to see a trickle of patients coming in where we can clearly hear a story where they were infected because of contact at a family gathering at Thanksgiving. So those numbers are just coming in now and we expect to see a much larger increase,” she told the supervisors.

Blum said CHOMP, with 20 licensed ICU beds, had been running 18-23 ICU patients – some infected with Covid-19, some with other ailments or recovering from surgery – over the previous week, which meant that in three cases the hospital cared for patients in its postoperative anesthesia recovery unit.

Doctors from Salinas Valley Memorial hospital and Natividad reported similar issues to the board. At Mee Memorial in King City, the small 25-bed hospital has no ICU beds, but is taking care of Covid patients from other hospitals who need less care, said Chief Medical Officer Robert Valladares. They were having issues finding enough staff to cover all beds there.

Monterey County Health Officer Edward Moreno told supervisors he would continue to monitor the county’s situation to decide whether to invoke the state’s stay-at-home order that would result in tighter restrictions.