The incessant increase in coronavirus cases is likely to result in home orders for Southern California and other areas, as intensive care beds are still dangerous.
The earliest date that Southern California could qualify to leave the existing order was Monday, but state officials said Sunday that the region and several other areas will likely have to continue for a few more weeks to follow the restrictions, as the recent boom hospitals to breaking point.
The restrictions include reduced capacity at stores; the closure of some businesses, including hair salons, nail salons, card rooms, museums, zoos and aquariums; and a ban on most gatherings, hotel accommodation for tourism and outdoor restaurants.
Stay-at-home orders remain in effect until the region’s expected ICU capacity is equal to or greater than 15%, according to state guidelines. In the Southern California and San Joaquin Valley region – which covers 23 of 58 California counties – the currently available ICU capacity stands at 0%.
This does not mean that there are no unoccupied ICU beds, as the state ensures that some remain open to patients who do not have COVID-19. But officials and experts warn that an overcrowded ICU could overload doctors and nurses, jeopardizing the quality of care for everyone, including COVID-19 patients, victims of heart attacks and those seriously injured in a car accident.
“It is likely that the regional home stay order will expand to many regions in California,” the California Department of Public Health said in a statement Sunday. Once a country has the threshold of 15% or more available, it must maintain that status for four weeks.
The likely expansion is no surprise. Gavin Newsom’s government predicted just as much on December 21: ‘It is likely that, given current trends, the order to stay at home should be expanded,’ he said during a briefing.
The state Department of Public Health reported that the state has so far 2,122,806 confirmed cases, with more than 24,000 deaths. There were more than 50,000 newly confirmed confirmed cases on Saturday.
On Sunday, health officials in Los Angeles reported more than 42,000 new cases of coronavirus over Christmas Day and Saturday together. Friday’s numbers – 15,538 cases – were delayed due to an outage with the Spectrum Internet service in the LA area. The country has averaged about 13,800 new cases of coronavirus per day in the past week and 88 COVID-19 deaths.
Orange County officials reported 3,200 cases and one death on Sunday.
Hospitals across the region are overwhelmed. Some oxygen supplies become scarce. This is critical for the treatment of seriously ill patients with COVID-19 who have begun to suffocate due to their virus-inflamed lungs. Emergencies are so crowded that ambulances have to wait as long as eight hours to drop off patients or are sometimes sent further to hospitals.
“Our hospitals already have too much capacity, and the high-quality medical care we are accustomed to in LA County is beginning to be jeopardized because our front-line health workers are out of the extreme,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of public health. last week.
According to one scenario, experts predict that by mid-January there may be an increase in new cases of coronavirus, an increase in hospitalizations by the end of January and early February and an increase in deaths by early to mid-February.
The rapid succession of holidays in the autumn and winter months usually enables people to celebrate with loved ones in a short period of time and spend time on it.
But that leaves little time for coronavirus cases to start falling before it increases again.
Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, a medical epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said anyone exposed to COVID-19 during a Christmas party could be infected on New Year’s Eve.
However, the individual may be asymptomatic, going to a New Year’s Eve and unknowingly spreading the disease, he said. Combined with a high infection rate – about 1 in 95 in Los Angeles County is infected with the virus, according to provincial estimates – the holiday creates a ‘viral wildfire’, he said.
Times author Joe Mozingo contributed to this report.