An ambulance crew is waiting with a patient outside the emergency room at Coast Plaza Hospital during a surge of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in Los Angeles, California, December 26, 2020.
David Swanson | Reuters
The outbreak of Covid-19 is so severe in Los Angeles County that ambulances have to wait hours to drop patients off in emergencies.
Hospital beds are squeezed into gift shops, cafeterias and conference rooms while hospitals struggle to find any available space for patients.
The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency on Monday told EMS employees to administer supplemental oxygen only if a patient’s saturation level drops below 90% to reduce the oxygen supply. Paramedics have also been told not to transport adult patients with a heart attack to the hospital unless they can restore “spontaneous circulation” on the premises – to draw attention to patients who are more likely to survive.
Los Angeles is facing an unprecedented increase in coronavirus patients, pushing nearby hospitals to the brink. Public health officials warn that the already dire situation will worsen in January.
“Many hospitals have reached a crisis and have to make very difficult decisions about patient care,” Dr Christina Ghaly, director of the province’s health services, said at a news conference on Monday. She urged residents to avoid the emergency unless they needed serious medical help.
Hospitals have been desperate since Decemer when the capacity of the intensive care unit in the region dropped rapidly to zero, according to state health officials. More than 8,000 people are now hospitalized with the virus in the country, and 20% of the people are in intensive care units, according to data compiled by the province’s health department in the country. As the virus is spreading widely, public health officials warn that conditions are likely to worsen before it improves.
Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and health care workers treat patients outside the emergency room at Community Hospital of Huntington Park during an increase in positive coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in Huntington Park, California, December 29, 2020.
Bing Guan | Reuters
Across California, about 370 people die daily from Covid-19, based on a weekly average – an increase of nearly 46% compared to a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University .
In Los Angeles County, the coronavirus kills someone on average every 15 minutes, the province’s director of public health, Barbara Ferrer, said Monday during the briefing. The province surpassed 11,000 total deaths in Covid-19 on Tuesday, with 1,000 people less than a week in, the public health department said in a statement.
Everyone in the area must accept that they will be exposed to the disease when they leave their home, Ferrer said. One in five people tested for Covid-19 in Los Angeles County has the virus.
“We will probably experience the worst conditions in January in which we experienced the whole pandemic, and it is difficult to imagine,” Ferrer said. “The increase in business is likely to continue for weeks to come due to holiday and New Year’s Eve parties and returning travelers.”
Staff stretched thin
Los Angeles County is still dealing with the flood of Covid-19 spurred out of the Thanksgiving holiday and has yet to see the issues likely to follow in the late December holidays, Ghaly said. Hospitals are now trying “to do everything in their power to prepare.”
Some coronavirus patients are forced to wait more than a day before a bed for intensive care units opens for them, said Dr. Brad Spellberg, chief medical officer at Los Angeles County University of Southern California, said in an email to CNBC. .
A healthcare professional monitors patients inside an oxygen tent outside the emergency room at the Community Hospital of Huntington Park during an increase in positive cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) in Huntington Park, California, December 29, 2020.
Bing Guan | Reuters
The hospital had to redeploy some of its health workers to treat the influx of ICU patients, meaning there is no time to do elective surgeries or other life-saving procedures, such as colonoscopies, Spellberg said.
Government Gavin Newsom said at a news conference on Monday that the state had sent medical aid teams to the Los Angeles area to reduce tensions in hospitals, but if there is another increase in cases of Covid-19 after the December holidays, the additional staff will not be enough, Spellberg said.
“Our staff is still thin, especially in the ICU. One can not just create more ICU nurses and doctors,” Spellberg said in an email, asking people to continue leading public health, such as wearing a mask, avoiding physical distance and the crowd.
‘We are crushed’
The boom came when California, along with other states in the US, began administering their initial shots of Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
The state received just over 2 million doses of vaccines, but only 24% of them were administered, according to the state’s public health database department, which was last updated on Wednesday. Newsom said Monday that the process is too slow and that the state “wants to see things go much faster.”
Ravina Kullar, an infectious disease expert in Los Angeles and a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told CNBC in a telephone interview that she expects the vaccination to accelerate in the coming weeks, although the shots are not immediate. will not work. It takes a few weeks before immunity builds up, and too little is given to develop herd immunity that will protect the wider population.
“I think we’ll see some kind of stability, which collapses and decreases in cases, but it’s just going to take time,” Kullar said. “I think it’s going to take until spring, summer to really see an impact there.”
Kullar, who works in long-term care facilities and nursing homes in Los Angeles, said every facility she works with is struggling with an outbreak in Covid-19. The residents, along with health workers, will be the first in line to receive vaccinations in California when it is rolled out, Newsom said, adding that there are about 3 million people in the state’s first vaccination phase.
“We are crushed,” Kullar said. “We are very short staffed. I am exhausted, my colleagues are exhausted. It is a very difficult situation out here.”
– The Associated Press contributed to this report.