Four firefighter-paramedics from the South San Joaquin County Fire Authority based in Tracy were deployed to a Southern California hospital to help address the surge of COVID-19 cases.
–The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) and the California Health and Human Services Agency today formally requested the deployment of 500 additional federal medical personnel into the state to staff hospitals, skilled nursing homes, and medical surge hospitals.
The request comes after the federal government notified the state that the USNS Mercy Hospital ship is now under mandatory maintenance, in dry dock, and not available for deployment.
In an effort to offset the unavailability of the Mercy ship, Governor Gavin Newsom and Cal OES have remained in close coordination with the White House requesting that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and United States Department of Defense (DoD) acquire and immediately deploy to additional hospitals in southern California, medical personnel equivalent to the staff that would have been on the USNS Mercy, and then some.