Prolonged waiting times to drop off patients at critically overcrowded hospitals in Los Angeles County are preventing ambulances from increasingly responding to other emergency calls, officials said Thursday.
Sometimes as many as ten ambulances stand in line to wait to drop off patients, and ‘patients waited outside ambulance sites [emergency departments] for seven hours, eight hours, ”said Cathy Chidester, director of the LA County Emergency Medical Services Agency.
“We no longer have ambulances, and our responses to 911 calls are getting longer,” she said during a briefing on Thursday.
In the Antelope Valley, ‘response times’ are getting longer, forcing officials to start relying on ambulance companies that, according to Chidester, are not traditionally used to respond to 911 calls.
And elsewhere in the province, officials are working with firefighters to man hospital ambulance bays to drop patients off faster so vehicles can return to circulation.
Unlike other disasters, such as a fire or an earthquake, Chidester said COVID-19’s toll on hospitals was a “hidden disaster” that is not immediately clear to the public.
But make no mistake, she stressed, “we are in the midst of a disaster.”
‘You can see the look in the staff’s eyes. “It’s like the deer in the headlights,” she said. “They are overwhelmed. They are pale. They are currently trying to do the best they can with limited resources because there are so many patients. ”
As the COVID-19 crisis worsens, and the number of infected individuals in need of professional care continues to grow, some hospitals need hours to make room for new patients arriving by ambulance; to send staff to treat people in the ambulances themselves; or to temporarily close their doors completely to ambulance traffic in particularly difficult moments.
There have been such long delays in dropping off patients that there has been an “unfortunate outcome,” Dr. Christina Ghaly, the director of health services in LA County, said this week.
The consequences of an overloaded healthcare system are far greater than those infected with COVID-19. Officials recently expressed concern that people suffering from strokes, heart attacks and seizures are languishing outside hospitals without getting the care they urgently need.
Even those who suffer from more sudden emergencies, such as getting into a car accident, may not be able to get the medical attention they need if conditions continue to deteriorate.
This is a “very dire situation facing the hospitals,” Ghaly said Thursday, and “this boom is pushing all hospitals nationwide to the brink of disaster.”
However, not everyone who enters the hospital is happy to go home. The virus has killed more Californians in the past two days than on any other day in the course of the entire pandemic – a backlash that has driven the state’s total death toll to 25,000.
California is the third state to reach the sick point and joins Texas and New York.
In the past three days, more than 1,100 people across the country died from COVID-19, including a record high of 442 on Tuesday and the second-highest total, 424, on Wednesday.
These numbers represent approximately the equivalent of one person dying from the disease every three and a half minutes.
The situation has become so dark that some mortuary and funeral homes say they have to turn away bereaved families because they do not have the ability to handle more corpses.
In Los Angeles County, which officially surpassed 10,000 total fatal coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, officials said they now see about 150 people die from COVID-19 daily – a figure that is almost as high as the average number of people dying daily to every other cause.
This amounts to one Angeleno dying every 10 minutes.
From midnight on Thursday, provincial officials will begin post new messages on Twitter at that interval, describe someone who has just lost his or her battle with COVID-19: the principal who stayed up late to look after each school, an ER nurse who spent double shifts for months on end, the local activist who worked to uplift a community, a dear colleague or friend, a beloved family member.
Each message was indicated with the same plea: “Slow down the spread. Save a life. ‘
“The heartbreaking thing is that if we had done a better job of reducing the transmission of the virus, many of these deaths would not have happened,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of public health in LA County.
The country’s most populous province also set successive records for COVID-19 daily deaths this week, with 262 reported on Wednesday and 242 on Tuesday.
Although recent figures have been partially affected by a backlog over the Christmas holiday weekend, officials say it is a sobering reality: that some are now paying the best price for decisions they or those they came in contact with weeks ago took.
“We have the chance to fix it,” Ferrer said Wednesday. “So let’s start today by acknowledging our shared humanity and responsibility to care for one another.”
Although there has been cautious optimism that the worst wave of the pandemic is beginning to subside in some areas – although especially in Southern California – the recent record high death toll shows the continued devastation caused by the coronavirus, and officials warn of even darker days ahead. if the state is toppled by another upsurge due to widespread rallies and travel for the winter holidays.
California must also now struggle with the presence of a new variant of the coronavirus that scientists say is even more contagious. The strain, first identified in the UK, was found in a 30-year-old man in San Diego County, and it is unclear how widespread it was.
“The next number of weeks will be challenging, especially with regard to this boom on top of a boom – I would also like to protest again about a possible additional boom of Christmas and hopefully a little more modest from New Year,” said Gavin Newsom. said.
Everyone, he added, should be aware of the dangers posed by the pandemic.
“Please do not just take naive or think that this is something that will not affect you because you are younger, it is only about older people,” he said on Wednesday.
As hospitals struggle to keep up with the flood of COVID-19 patients, the state has also deployed 1,280 medical personnel – including from the California National Guard medical corps – to help with health care, officials said Thursday.
A particularly valuable resource is beds in hospitals’ intensive care units, which are needed for patients in the worst condition.
Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley had 0% available capacity in their ICUs for about two weeks at a time – a disturbing measure that does not necessarily mean that no beds are open, but that space, resources and staff are insecure.
According to the latest state data, the availability of ICU in the Bay fell to 8.5% from Thursday and was at 14.4% in Greater Sacramento.
All four of these regions are under home commands, aimed at limiting coronavirus transmission through strict restrictions on businesses and activities.
Although the restrictions have been met in some corners, and that a ban on outdoor dining is particularly offensive, officials and experts say they are girded with a fundamental truth: that the best way to curb the virus is to reduce opportunities for it can spread by reducing interactions and mixing between different households.
During a virtual conversation with Newsom on Wednesday, dr. Anthony Fauci, the top expert on the US government, said it was wrong to present the situation as a choice between public health and economic strength.
“We need to use social measures as a vehicle, a gateway, a tool to get the economy back,” he said. “It’s not the economy versus public health. It’s public health that helps you This is what we need to realize and not say, ‘I do not want to do this, because I want the economy to open up.’ “You will open the economy if you lower the level of infection, and the only way you will lower the level of infection before the vaccine starts is through public health measures.”
Officials have strongly encouraged residents to stay home and avoid the temptation to celebrate New Year with someone they do not live with.
San Francisco extended its coronavirus home and travel quarantine orders indefinitely Thursday, and state officials said the order over the Greater Sacramento region “is likely to be expanded based on early ICU projections.”
Across the state, officials pleaded with residents not to gather with people outside their immediate households for the holidays.
“The steps we have taken together have served us well, but the fact remains that San Francisco is still in the midst of its worst boom,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, the city’s public health director, said. “We must continue to take precautionary measures that we believe will slow down the spread of the virus and save lives.”
If these pleas fall on deaf ears, officials warn that turning the calendar will bring more pain and suffering in a state already suffering from a year of incalculable loss.
“We absolutely have to get this boom under control, and it’s going to take everyone’s effort to do that,” Ghaly said. “If we do not do this, the beginning of 2021 will be worse than the end of 2020. And this is not a situation that one of us wants to happen.
Times authors Maura Dolan, Soumya Karlamangla and Matthew Ormseth contributed to this report.