Los Angeles hospitals take drastic steps to tackle Covid-19 crisis

California health officials are using drastic measures to reduce the crippling stress in its hospitals, as the increase in coronavirus hospitalizations illustrates the high cost of the state not flattening the curve of the pandemic.

At Christmas, public health officials in California pleaded not to gather with family, friends or strangers in a desperate attempt to ward off an impending increase in business. New restrictions were imposed on a large portion of the state last month in an effort to keep a lid on the upward trajectory.

However, the crisis has not been averted: state hospitalizations have increased by 17 percent in the past two weeks, the health department said. The use of intensive care units (ICU) increased by 21 percent as capacity decreased.

“The anticipated rise of the winter holidays has begun,” Dr. Barbara Ferrer, director of public health in Los Angeles, told a news conference. ‘We are probably going to experience the worst conditions in January with the whole pandemic. And it’s hard to imagine. ”

California, the most populous U.S. state, has been hammered out by the continuing boom in Covid-19 infections and hospitalizations spreading across the country. According to data from the Covid Tracking Project, the US has registered more than 20 million infections and nearly 350,000 deaths, while hospitalizations are at a record high – 131,195.

The California Department of Health on Tuesday attributed a further 368 deaths to the coronavirus, one of the largest increases in the state’s death toll in one day, and 31,440 new infections.

In Los Angeles County, which has 10 million inhabitants, officials have taken drastic steps to grapple with the tremendous tension.

A January 4 memo from provincial officials told paramedics agencies not to bring any more hospital patients who have an extremely low chance of survival. According to the guidelines, a person who is seriously injured in a car accident, and who can not live again after at least ten minutes, should not be admitted.

“Hopefully, it serves as a wake-up call,” said Dr. Marc Eckstein, medical director and commander of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s ambulance service. “I suspect we’ll be approaching the peak in the next few weeks.”

He said ambulance operators had been waiting for hours to get critically ill patients – of whatever nature – into hospitals, where emergency beds and cages had been set up in almost every conceivable space, including car parks.

“It doesn’t matter who they are, or their level of insurance, whether they are there for a heart attack or a gunshot wound or Covid – there are no resources,” said Dr. Eckstein said, emphasizing that ambulances are waiting at hospitals. , increased the response time for all emergencies.

“We had very few ambulances today,” he said Tuesday. “We transported firefighters from fire trucks and trucks to reserve ambulances.”

Of his 3,500 team, 170 are currently suffering from Covid-19, Dr. Eckstein said, including three who are “fighting for their lives”.

State officials on Tuesday night ordered hospitals, in areas where there is no ICU available, to delay some operations and procedures – to transfer patients to less-affected regions to free up capacity. “Serious cancer removal and necessary heart surgery” could still take place, officials said.

“This mission helps ensure that patients continue to receive appropriate medical services by better distributing the available resources across the state to prevent overwhelmingly specific hospitals, provinces and regions,” said Dr. Tomás Aragón, director of the California Department of Public Health , said.

On average over the past two weeks, the state has recorded 38,000 positive cases per day, with nearly 300 deaths. According to the demographic analysis provided by the state, Latinos are excessively represented among the dead, making up almost half.

The large number of patients also caused oxygen deficiencies. In a separate instruction to ambulance operators, paramedics were told to strictly ration any supplemental oxygen given to patients, with exceptions made only for patients in a severe respiratory distress.

According to Dr. Christina Ghaly of the LA County Department of Health, aging pipes have made the failure of oxygen to so many patients difficult at the same time.

Members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been deployed in seven hospitals – in the province of LA and the surrounding San Bernardino – to upgrade oxygen systems and “bring in extra oxygen trucks”.

“We are trying to assess how we can reduce the stress on their facilities and mechanical spaces,” Colonel Julie Balten of the Corps told reporters.

The effort was part of a broad “oxygen task force” set up by the state to work on acquiring portable units, California Gov. Gavin Newsom told a news conference.

With hospitals under intense pressure, the state has also come under fire for being too slow to introduce vaccines.

So far, while 1.6 million doses of the Moderna vaccine have been distributed to health care facilities in California, according to the latest figures, only 459,564 have been administered.

“We want to see 100 percent of the reception immediately administered into people’s arms, so it’s a challenge,” he said. Newsom said. “It’s a challenge across the country. This is a challenge in the rest of the world. But that’s not an excuse. ”