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LOS ANGELES (AP) – Hospitals across California have nearly run out of intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients, ambulances are backing up in front of emergency rooms and tents for triage of sick people go up as the The country’s most populous state is emerging as the last epicenter of the epidemic in the United States.
California reported a staggering 52,000 new cases in a single day on Thursday – the equivalent of the US average in mid-October – and a single-day record of 379 deaths. More than 16,000 people are in hospital with the coronavirus statewide, more than triple the number from a month ago.
“I have seen more deaths in the past nine months in my intensive care unit than in my entire 20-year career,” said Amy Arlund, nurse at Kaiser Permanente Fresno Medical Center.
While the outbreak of the virus has pushed hospitals elsewhere in the country to breaking point in recent weeks, the crisis is worsening at alarming rate in California, even as the nationwide rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations this week and the imminent release of a second vaccine has done so. raised hopes of overcoming the scourge.
Critical care unit capacity is below 1% in many counties across California, and mortuary space is also running out, in what increasingly looks like last spring’s disaster in New York City.
Patients are cared for at several overflow locations, including a former NBA arena in Sacramento, a former prison, and a college gymnasium. The reserve sites include a vacant Sears building in Riverside County.
At St. Mary Medical Center in Southern California in Apple Valley, patients are sorted outside in tents, and the hospital has erected temporary walls in its lobby to make more room. to treat people with COVID-19. Patients are also treated in the hallways on carts or chairs, sometimes for days on end because there is nowhere else to put them, said Randall Castillo, general manager of the hospital.
Dr Nasim Afsar, director of operations at UCI Health in Orange County, described a never-ending turnover of patients, many of whom went to the emergency room to wait until a bed elsewhere in the hospital sank. opens.
“Every day we work and we release the appropriate number of people, and the next day all those beds are filled again,” she said.
Dr Denise Whitfield, an emergency physician at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said ambulance teams were waiting for patients to be seen.
“In the past nine months that we have been dealing with this COVID pandemic, I can say that this is the worst thing that I have seen in regards to our ability to take care of our patients,” a- she declared.
The virus has killed more than 300,000 Americans, and the country averages over 2,500 deaths and more than 215,000 new cases per day. Across the country, the number of hospital patients with COVID-19 has reached a record high of more than 113,000.
Across the country, other hospitals are also stationing patients in ERs because they run out of intensive care beds, also moving adults to pediatric hospitals, and bringing in staff from out of state. to treat the sick in makeshift wards.
Doctors are forced to make tough decisions. Some hospitals are sending low-risk COVID-19 patients home with oxygen and monitors to free up beds for the critically ill.
Some states are bracing for the possibility of rationing care if hospitals are still overwhelmed. If a hospital doesn’t have enough ventilators, for example, doctors would have to make the agonizing decision of which patients should get them.
Last week, Idaho’s top public health leaders led the way the state to resort to rationing – or to impose what are called crisis care standards – if necessary. Hospitals should reserve scarce and potentially life-saving resources for the patients most likely to survive.
In Texas, many intensive care units are at or near capacity. Authorities on Wednesday reported having just over 700 intensive care beds open statewide.
In Saint-Louis, where intensive care units are around 90% full, hospitals have had to double patients in intensive care rooms and remove nurses from the operating room so they can help the critically ill, said Dr. Alex Garza, head of the Metropolitan St. Louis Pandemic Task Force.
Garza said overworked healthcare workers can only sustain this for so long: “You’re just going to wear them out or you’re going to make them sick or something is going to happen.”
Hospitalizations in California are now double the summer peak. The state has recruited more than 500 additional staff and deployed them statewide, although most lack the skills to help in ISUs. The state is looking for a total of 3,000 contract medical staff.
The Fresno County hospital system is under such strain that authorities have hired an external team of 31 doctors, nurses and support staff to help treat patients in a makeshift ward.
In the Central Valley, where hospital space is rapidly shrinking, health officials say the region of heavily Latino and migrant agricultural workers is plagued by a lack of access to transport and health care; higher disease rates, mistrust of medicine; overcrowded households; and jobs that do not allow people to work from home.
“They are front line workers, they work in our grocery stores, they work in sanitation. They cannot stay at home. They don’t have the luxury of working from home, ”says Dr. Piero Garzaro, infectious disease specialist at Kaiser Permanente Central Valley. “How can you isolate yourself when you live in a 1,000 square foot apartment when there are five people, including Grandpa and Grandma?”
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Richer reported from Boston. Associated Press reporters Amy Taxin in Orange County, Haven Daley and Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco, and Paul Weber in Austin, Texas contributed to this report.
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