There are now 98 of the trailers to help tortoises store bodies “with respect and dignity,” said Mark Ghilarducci, director of the emergency services office. In Los Angeles County, where an average person dies every 6 minutes, temporary storage facilities have been set up in the parking lot next to the coroner’s office.
The emergency services office uses state hospital data to provide how many people could die in the coming weeks. The state is analyzing various models to try to predict hospitalizations and deaths. The “ensemble” projection that combines all the models estimates that another 10,000 people will die in the next three weeks.
It could take at least two weeks before the state knows the full extent of the damage done by the virus during the holiday season, when many people have ignored the pleas to stay home and not get together with friends and extended family. On average, about 12% of all positive people end up in hospital, so if there are new cases, it will further overwhelm hospitals. And eventually more people will die.
Ghilarducci said the state had activated its “plan to manage mass deaths” to try to avoid major back-up in mortuaries.
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“It’s important to know that there is a plan, that it’s going on, and that it’s active today,” Ghilarducci said. “We will continue to work with each of our 58 provinces to ensure that all of these people are cared for in the most respectful manner.”
The gloomy prediction was in contrast to a cheerful news conference held by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Gavin Newsom Gov. Newsom at Dodger Stadium, which is being transformed into a vaccination center that can deliver 12,000 doses a day.
California has received more than 3.5 million doses of the vaccine and administered just over 1 million doses. Newsom said the state was on track to exceed its target of handing out 1.5 million doses by Friday.
Newsom has tried to shed light on encouraging trends: hospitalizations, admissions to the intensive care unit and positivity rates – the percentage of people tested for the virus – have declined over the past seven days.
The numbers were enough earlier this week for the Newsom government to lift the homestead for the 13-county Sacramento region, which is the state capital and Lake Tahoe, a popular winter tourist destination.
The move allows hair and nail salons and other businesses to reopen, and that restaurants can go out to eat, and this increases the number of customers in the retail department slightly.
“We start seeing light at the end of the tunnel, not just the light that the vaccines provide,” Newsom said.
California – the country with the largest population with nearly 40 million inhabitants – has had an average of more than 41,000 new cases of coronavirus per day over the past two weeks, dwarfing early outbreaks. While California has the second highest number of deaths in the country, the state ranks 39th in the number of deaths per capita at 81.8.
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