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FILE – In this file photo from November 19, 2020, medical staff are subject to a COVID-19 patient at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles. Hospitals across California have nearly run out of intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients, ambulances are backing up to emergency rooms and tents to treat the sick rise as the country’s most populous state emerges as the last epicenter of the American epidemic. (AP Photo / Jae C. Hong, file)
LOS ANGELES (AP) – California’s increasingly desperate hospitals are “crushed” by the surge in coronavirus infections, with a Los Angeles emergency doctor predicting on Friday that rationing of care is imminent.
The most populous state has recorded more than 41,000 new confirmed cases and 300 deaths, both among the highest totals in a single day during the pandemic. In the past week, California has reported more than a quarter of a million cases and 1,500 deaths.
“I’m not going to put this to sleep. We’re crushed, ”said Dr. Brad Spellberg, chief medical officer of Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, which has more than 600 beds and is one of the largest in the county.
It’s a scene that takes place across California. According to state data on Friday, all of Southern California and the 12 northern San Joaquin Valley counties had depleted the capacity of their usual intensive care unit and some hospitals began using “state of the art” space. “.
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FILE – In this file photo from December 17, 2020, medical workers remove a stretcher from an ambulance near medical tents outside the emergency room at UCI Medical Center in Irvine, California. Doctors said on Friday, Dec. 18, increasingly desperate California hospitals were “crushed” by the surge in coronavirus infections. (AP Photo / Ashley Landis, file)
Statewide, critical care capacity available on Friday was a tiny 2.1%.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist, discussed California’s predicament at an event hosted by the California State University system.
He warned that unless people cut back on their travel and gatherings over the holidays, “it’s very likely that we’re going to experience what I call a wave” which is particularly dangerous “in the state of California, which is just at this point of being overrun in parts of the state. “
Many emergency rooms are already using outdoor tents to create more space, said Dr. Marc Futernick, an emergency physician in Los Angeles, a board member for the California chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians. A hospital that has maximized its outdoor overflow tent is expanding into a nearby gym, he said.
Still, coronavirus cases have not peaked in this third and more devastating wave, which means more drastic measures are on the horizon. Statewide, around 16,000 coronavirus victims are hospitalized – more than double the previous peak reached in July – and a state model that uses current data to forecast future trends shows the number could reach an unfathomable 75,000. ‘by mid-January.
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FILE – In this file photo from December 17, 2020, medical tents are set up outside the emergency room at the UCI Medical Center in Irvine, California. outbreak of coronavirus infections. (AP Photo / Ashley Landis, file)
“While it’s true that I don’t think anyone is doing this kind of rationing of care, or really feeling overwhelmed at this exact moment, there’s no doubt it’s around the corner,” said Futernick. “There is no possible way to avoid this. The numbers are too big. “
The Corona Regional Medical Center in Southeast Los Angeles has converted a former emergency room to help manage nearly double the usual number of intensive care patients. He uses the space in two disaster tents to sort out emergency patients, as the emergency room is filled with patients who need to be hospitalized. Ambulances can sit for two hours unless they are bringing patients in a critical, life-threatening or fatal emergency.
“There is no room at the hostel, so to speak,” said hospital general manager Mark Uffer. “Every nook and cranny of the hospital is literally used.”
He and Spellberg said it only fueled anxiety among health workers when they saw people failing to follow state-mandated safety precautions to slow the spread of the virus when disaster appeared imminent.
“Whatever happens, I don’t think any of us will be able to handle it,” Uffer said. “You have a dam about to break, and you have to stop putting water in the dam.
Spellberg said every day of the past week at his hospital had started with no intensive care beds available and no difficulty finding room in spaces that typically don’t treat critical patients, such as post-surgical recovery areas.
Los Angeles County Health Services Director Dr Christina Ghaly said hospitals are “adding three beds to a room that may have been a double, or turning a single into a double,” dangerously stretching the staff.
John Chapman, president and CEO of the San Antonio Regional Hospital in the Highlands, said telemetry nurses who monitor patients’ vital signs shouldn’t supervise more than four people, but could end up taking five. or six because of overwriting cases.
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FILE – In this file photo from December 7, 2020, people line up for COVID-19 testing at a testing site operated by CORE in Los Angeles. Hospitals across California have nearly run out of intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients, ambulances are backing up to emergency rooms, and tents to treat the sick rise as the country’s most populous state emerges as the last epicenter of the American epidemic. (AP Photo / Jae C. Hong)
“It definitely increases the risk that something is wrong,” he said.
Almost all of California is under a new health order that includes a nighttime curfew for everyone except essential workers and errands, and which closes or restricts operations at virtually all businesses. Newsom and health officials have pleaded with people to stay home and wear masks and to get away socially whenever they are outside their homes.
“We are struggling to get to the top of this third wave,” Newsom said in a 14-minute video posted on his Facebook page Friday. He said the state expects to receive 672,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine as early as next week, in addition to 233,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine.
“We need the public to listen to these mitigation strategies to slow the spread or we’ll be completely out of beds,” Spellberg said.
Meanwhile, emergency rooms are filling up with patients who should be hospitalized but cannot because there is no room. Ambulance providers are planning how to handle the increase in the number of cases and may need to start sorting patients in the field rather than bringing them in, except in the most critical cases, Futernick said.
“I’m afraid it’s worse than what we’ve seen in New York,” he said. “When New York’s hospitals were overwhelmed, health care providers poured in from all over the country.”
“None of this is happening right now, and there’s no way it’s happening because every place is busy,” Futernick said. “There is no cavalry coming.”
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Taxin reported from Orange County. Associated Press writers Adam Beam and Don Thompson have contributed from Sacramento.
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