- Some patients in one Los Angeles hospital are now being treated in the gift shop and chapel, as COVID-19 cases are large and limited.
- COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles County are still breaking records and very intensive care units have reached 0% capacity in recent weeks.
- Public health experts attribute the increase mainly to people traveling and visiting friends and family during the holidays.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
A Los Angeles hospital is so overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases that it is now being forced to treat some patients in the gift shop and chapel, CNN reports.
Dr. Elaine Batchlor, chief executive of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, said that if the cases continued to increase, it might lead to war techniques designed to ration.
“We could be forced to do something that we all, as health professionals, should really just have an aversion to,” Batchlor told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin.
The hospital serves poor communities in South Los Angeles, reports The New York Times.
Dr. Oscar Casillas, medical director of the hospital’s emergency department, told The Times that although the emergency department could normally see about 30 people at a time, they saw as many as 100 people a day amid the pandemic.
The waiting room of the hospital is now a tent outside.
“Everything is backed up to the street,” Casillas said.
The Times said COVID-19 patients make up 66% of the community hospital’s capacity.
Similar situations play out in hospitals across Los Angeles County, especially in South LA. Earlier this month, California activated its ‘mass deaths’ program after deaths in the state increased. The program is intended to ensure that local agencies are not overloaded. Southern California, which covers more than 56,000 square miles and has a population of nearly 24 million people, had a 0% ICU capacity at the time.
LA officials are now working to test samples for the new and more transmissible strain of coronavirus, initially discovered in the UK.
However, many health experts, including Barbara Ferrer, the director of public health in Los Angeles County, said the reason for the boom can be attributed to people ignoring social distance and other protective measures during the holidays.