Amid a rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak, Patton State Hospital has inoculated nearly 65% of its patients with their first dose of vaccine, a lawyer for the Attorney General’s Office said Friday, Jan. 22.
Patton has been pushing to have all its consenting patients inoculated with the first dose of the vaccine by Friday, but it remained unclear whether it had met that goal.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Lisa Tillman told U.S. District Court Judge Jesus G. Bernal during a telephonic conference Friday that 812 patients and 1,295 staff — more than 50% of all employees — had been inoculated as of Thursday, Jan. 21.
Facing litigation by a disability rights nonprofit alarmed by the outbreak, and a push by Bernal to vaccinate all consenting staff and patients, the Department of State Hospitals is working to curb the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus at Patton and the state’s four other lockdown psychiatric hospitals in Atascadero, Coalinga, Napa and Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk.
Attorneys for Disability Rights California were initially seeking the transfer of more than 300 high-risk patients to safer, noncongregate facilities during the outbreak, but now are holding off while the state works to correct the issue.
Bernal on Friday requested further information from the state on the number of patients who have not consented to being vaccinated or have medical conditions precluding them from being inoculated. Patton houses roughly 1,200 patients, mostly referred by the courts.
Bernal also requested information from the state on how many conservators — those acting on behalf of 217 Patton patients who lack the capacity to give consent on their own — granted or refused consent for patient vaccinations.
Tillman told Bernal the hospital did not document which patients refused the vaccination. “Those patients who did not consent were not required to sign any paperwork. I don’t believe there’s data as to the number of patients who did not consent,” Tillman said. She told Bernal she would have to check on the outreach efforts to patient conservators and how many either granted or refused consent for vaccination.
Anne Hadreas, an attorney for the patient plaintiffs, requested information from the state on the number of patients at Patton who have not yet been given the opportunity to consent or refuse the vaccine, as well as a schedule for when patients will receive their second dose of the vaccine.
As of Friday, 531 patients had tested positive for the potentially deadly virus and 16 patients have died since May 30. As of Jan. 20, 58 patients had been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the 14 previous days, according to a declaration filed Thursday in court by Patton Executive Director Janine Wallace.
On Jan. 12, the Department of State Hospitals temporarily suspended for up to 30 days the admission of patients involuntarily committed for evaluation, as well as those declared incompetent to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of insanity at trial.
Patton leads the state’s five hospitals in the number of COVID-19-infected patients, and is second in the number of patient deaths. Coalinga State Hospital reported 19 deaths as of Friday, according to Department of State Hospital’s tracking data. Patton is the largest of the state’s five hospitals.
Bernal ordered the state to produce all the requested information to the court by the end of the business day on Tuesday, Jan. 26, and set the next telephonic hearing for Jan. 29.
