The daily coronavirus case study in California remains about four times larger than it was during the state’s summer boom, and officials predict that the adverse effects of a boom in December related to holiday gatherings will worsen as winter continues. .
After new infections – driven by Thanksgiving travel and gatherings, then Christmas festivities – led to a resurgence, unlike what the state has yet to see, the trajectory of its new affairs flattened somewhat in the early days of 2021.
But there are more than twice as many Covid-19 patients in California hospitals as a month ago, and many intensive care units in the state are overflowing. It has also been found that at least six people in the state have been infected with the new, more transmissible variant of the virus first identified in Britain.
The state also has an oxygen shortage for patients, and he has enlisted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the California Emergency Medical Services Authority to help unload and refill oxygen tanks.
In a sign of how serious the shortage is, Marianne Gausche-Hill, the medical director of the EMS agency in Los Angeles County, on Sunday issued guidelines to emergency service workers for administering the ‘minimum oxygen required’ around the oxygen saturation level of patients or just over 90 percent. (A level in the low 90s or less is of concern to people with Covid-19.)
In the cruel logic of the pandemic, more cases can inevitably be translated into more suffering and death. As of Monday night, 4,258 people had died with Covid-19 in the previous two weeks, compared to 3,043 in the two weeks before.
“It’s a deadly disease, it’s a deadly pandemic,” Gavin Newsom told reporters on Monday. “It remains more deadly today than at any point in the history of the pandemic.”
There has been some progress. For example, California’s daily average of 38,086 cases per day over the past week represents an 11 percent decrease from the average two weeks earlier. And although Covid-19 hospitalizations have increased by 18 percent over the past two weeks, to 20,618, Governor Newsom said it represents a slight flattening of the curve.
But the state’s last major Covid-19 boom during the summer yielded only about 10,000 infections on the worst days. And in Los Angeles County, the health care system has become so thin through the recent crisis that incoming patients in one hospital were recently instructed to wait in an outdoor tent.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Sunday that the province’s latest surge infects a new person every six seconds and that many broadcasts take place in private environments.
“This is a message for the whole of America: we may not all have the same density as LA, but what is happening in LA can and will happen in many communities in America,” he said.
The worst of the state’s outbreaks are concentrated in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, where intensive care units have no percentage. Officials are now bringing in extra nursing staff to look after the flood of patients; Governor Newsom said 90 patients were being held in ‘alternative care places’ outside hospitals to alleviate the burden.
More vaccinations will help ease the burden on California, but Governor Newsom said vaccinations are only being acted upon after facing early challenges. So far, he said, the state has administered only about 35 percent of the coronavirus vaccine doses.
“It’s not good enough,” he said. “We recognize it.”
In the meantime, dr. Mark Ghaly, the secretary of health and human services, said. Californians need to be extra careful about gathering people outside their household now that the virus is so prevalent.
“The same activities you did a month ago are just as much more risky today than from a Covid transfer perspective,” he said.