As officials ramp up efforts to curtail the spread of the new coronavirus, San Francisco General Hospital’s nurses and doctors fear the overcrowded and understaffed medical center is not prepared to handle an imminent local outbreak.

The public health emergency — including two confirmed cases in San Francisco — underscores the potential dire consequences of the hospital’s chronic lack of resources, city health workers said at a rally and Board of Supervisors committee hearing on Thursday.

“We’re on the verge of a pandemic and we have no proper staffing — we are not ready,” said Theresa Rutherford, a nursing assistant at Laguna Honda Hospital, the city’s long-term care facility. “The nurses have been warning this city. They have not listened.”

Rutherford, vice president of San Francisco’s Service Employees International Union, stood across from City Hall to rally with roughly 75 registered nurses, resident doctors and social workers ahead of a Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee hearing, where supervisors considered a resolution urging officials to address the issues.

The resolution, sponsored by Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, calls on the city’s public health department to include nurses and doctors in general decision-making, expedite the notoriously slow hiring process, support bilingual staff and provide annual violence prevention and disaster-preparedness training.

Christa Duran, an emergency room nurse at San Francisco General, said her department has not had a disaster coordinator for six months. Half of the night-shift staff have less than two years of experience, she added, and have not been trained in disaster preparedness.

“We’re not even prepared for the predictable flu season,” Duran said. “So what makes them think we would be prepared for the coronavirus?”

The rally and hearing comes after Mayor London Breed held a news conference Thursday to announce the first two coronavirus cases originating in San Francisco. Breed said the city is prepared for the outbreak.

“We have been planning for this for weeks, and so we are prepared as a city,” said Breed, who declared a state of emergency for San Francisco on Feb. 25 to ramp up the city’s efforts to prepare for and confront local cases.

More than 530 resident doctors and members of the Committee of Interns and Residents, a SEIU chapter, signed a petition demanding that hospital administration prioritize patient care and increase staffing, according to the resolution.

The emergency department is “on diversion” more than 60% of the time — meaning it is closed to non-trauma patients due to understaffing and not being prepared for an influx of patients, according to the union.

California has 65 confirmed cases of Covid-19, including 36 in the Bay Area. A 71-year-old Placer County man died Wednesday after likely becoming infected on a San Francisco cruise ship. Officials are investigating a “cluster” of Northern California cases tied to the cruise ship and said Bay Area residents could have been exposed.

A combination of fatigued, overworked nurses and an influx of patients creates the perfect storm, said Sasha Cuttler, a public health nurse.

“It’s like a petri dish for growing and spreading all manner of infectious diseases and fear,” Cuttler said.

Amulya Iyer, a resident doctor of family medicine at San Francisco General, said the expected influx of patients will stress the system “even more than it already is.” He said nurses and doctors could easily become infected by coronavirus patients.

There is no separate holding area for patients with respiratory symptoms, so they would sit in the waiting room wearing a mask, Duran said. Medical workers do not have enough personal protective equipment, she added.

At the hearing, Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the Department of Public Health, said delays in the hiring process for nurses were “completely unacceptable” and that he implemented changes in leadership to the human resources department. The department is taking key steps to address the nurses’ concerns, he said.

“I know firsthand that nurses and their care provide the foundation of the hospital,” Colfax said. “Staffing and the quality of that staff is paramount, as is, and always will be, worker safety. This is an issue not only in the emergency room at Zuckerberg, but an issue across our health system in San Francisco, across our state, as well as nationally. Covid-19 has only highlighted these issues.”

Safaí said he wants public health officials to aggressively expedite the hiring process to as short as 30 days. The average hiring timeline for a nurse is 165.5 days, according to public health officials.

“We are here to ensure the city and county of SF is ready for the crisis that is on our hands,” Safaí said.

Lack of preparation for coronavirus is not necessarily unique to San Francisco hospitals, according to a study released Thursday by National Nurses United and California Nurses Association. A survey of 6,500 nurses from 48 states conducted by the union found that 44% of nurses were told by their employer how to recognize and respond to potentially infected patients; 63% have access to N95 respirator masks; and 30% say they have enough personal protective equipment in their department to handle a surge a patients.

Anna Bauman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: anna.bauman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @abauman2