On the same day that California reported by far the highest number of deaths since the onset of the pandemic, Barbara Ferrer, director of public health in Los Angeles, said LA violated its own grim threshold. On Wednesday, the country has lost 10,000 lives lost to Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic.
Specifically, Los Angeles County recorded 274 deaths from the virus in the previous 24 hours, for a total of 10,056.
According to Ferrer, the average daily deaths from 14 days a day for the virus were about 150. This is ‘approximately equal to the number of deaths due to all other causes, which is about 170’, Ferrer said.
What’s more: “The impact of this current boom is overwhelming for our hospitals and it is increasing deaths.” The percentage of Covid-infected patients now sent to the ICU rose from 20% last week to 26% on Wednesday. So it is not only the virus that turns out to be deadly, but also the nightmare scenario that Angelenos are dying because they cannot get the necessary care from overwhelming ICUs.
Related story
California’s Daily Covid-19 deaths reach shocking new high; More than 600% in the last month
“Some patients wait in ambulances because there is no space,” said LA province supervisor Hilda Solis before revealing, “Our medical examiner obtains abundant bodies from hospitals that cannot store them.”
Given the amount of travel and mixing that probably took place during the holidays, Ferrer said, “we need to be prepared for an increase over and above this increase.”
What’s more, at the beginning of a conversation with dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday, California Govin Newsom revealed that the new, allegedly more contagious strain of the Covid-19 first identified in the United Kingdom has been found in California, specifically Southern California.
Newsom said he was notified “about an hour ago” that the new tribe had been found in the state. Although the variation is much more contagious, according to experts, it does not appear to be more lethal per case. Fauci said he is not surprised that there is a case “and probably more cases in California.”
This, in addition to the floods and deaths described by LA County health officials, paints a very bleak picture of the coming weeks in LA
“Many mortuaries across the province are filling up and they are struggling to try to make room,” said Dr. Christina Ghaly, who oversees the four provincial hospitals, said. “This is causing a backlog of bodies at various facilities throughout the province.” Ghaly said the province is working with the facilities to try to come up with alternatives for storing the bodies.
Ghaly said the LA County morgue, which she oversees, “had 386 open spaces” by the end of yesterday. “The issue was, according to her, ‘private hospitals experiencing problems with a backup of corpses due to the surplus of mortuaries.’ The provincial medical examiner assumed the capacity – or lack thereof.
Eric Garcetti, mayor of LA, said Cedars-Sinai had two floors dedicated to Covid-19 patients a few weeks ago. The hospital has occupied eight floors by virus patients since Wednesday.
In terms of patients waiting in ambulances for beds to open, Ghaly said: “There were unfortunate outcomes for patients who could not be sent to hospitals on time.” When asked for details, she did not provide them.
The district also reported 10,392 new cases on Wednesday. The lower number of daily new cases is likely due to the fact that test centers were closed over Christmas, Ferrer said.
COVID-19 Daily Update:
30 December 2020
New Business: 10 392 (so far 756 116)
New deaths: 274 (10,056 to date)
Current hospitalizations: 7,415 pic.twitter.com/qJtwIIs9ZR– LA Public Health (@lapublichealth) 30 December 2020
“There’s a lot of community spread, and that makes it easier for this virus to keep spreading,” Ferrer said earlier this week. “So we’ll have to do everything we can to contain the virus.”
‘Please do not go outside your household to celebrate New Year’s Eve. If we do not do this, the beginning of 2021 will be worse than the end of 2020, ‘said dr. Ghaly said.