Over the past few days, California officials have painted an increasingly catastrophic picture of the state’s Covid-19 crisis, exactly what they warned of as the state faces an oxygen shortage.
California has deployed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the California Emergency Medical Services Authority to deliver and refill oxygen tanks.
In Los Angeles County, emergency workers were told to save oxygen and administer the minimum amount of oxygen to keep patients’ oxygen saturation levels at or just above 90 percent. (A level in the low 90s or less is of concern to people with Covid-19.)
Officials in the most populous U.S. province said a person is infected every six seconds in the country and one in every five residents currently tested is infected with Covid-19. “Your bubble is not as safe as you think,” the department said tweeted.
Government Gavin Newsom has warned that the worst is yet to come: a ‘boom on top of a boom’ driven by post-holiday infections.
As of Tuesday night, 4,374 people had died with Covid-19 in the previous two weeks, compared to 3,202 in the two weeks before.
In some cases, the victims of that upsurge will go nowhere.
Health authorities in Los Angeles County have instructed ambulance personnel not to transport patients with cardiac arrest whose survival is unlikely. At some hospitals, patients are lined up outside while workers try to find sleeping accommodation.
California was already short on hospital beds before the pandemic, and ICU capacity in much of the state has not existed for weeks.
The boom in Southern California was so severe that industry groups themselves appealed to film and television production, which was allowed to continue even after eating out outdoors. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing 160,000 workers in the industry, is working with groups representing producers and advertisers to call off production on Sunday.
In their statement, it is noted that even if workers do not contract the virus, they still run the risk of avoiding injuries due to stunts, hardware failures or falls.
“With few or no hospital beds available, it is difficult to understand how a worker injured on the set was supposed to seek treatment,” said David White, national executive director of SAG-AFTRA.
The Grammy Awards, one of the biggest nights in the entertainment industry, were postponed from Tuesday, January 31 to March 14. A statement from the Recording Academy, which is handing over the awards, and CBS, its longtime broadcasting partner, called the “deteriorating” situation in Los Angeles.