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Los Angeles County is set to become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, a health official said on Friday – a disastrous statement that comes as Californians die from COVID-19 in never-before-seen numbers.
As the worst wave of the coronavirus hit the entire state, the effects have been particularly pronounced in the country’s most populous county, where officials have warned the healthcare system is already being pushed to its breaking point.
“I’m not going to insult this: we’re crushed,” said Dr. Brad Spellberg, chief medical officer of Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.
Local hospitals are already “severely overcrowded,” he said in a briefing on Friday, and “LA County is emerging as the epicenter of the pandemic.”
“We are not yet at the stage where other parts of the world, including the United States, have suffered catastrophic consequences. But we are moving in that direction, ”he said. “And if we don’t stop the spread, our hospitals will be overwhelmed. If you have a heart attack, have a car accident, fall from a ladder, or have a stroke, we may not have a bed for you.
The main concern for many is the county’s intensive care units, which are needed for critically ill or seriously injured patients.
More than 1,000 people with COVID-19 are now in LA County ICUs, four times the number on November 1.
There are around 2,500 licensed intensive care beds across the county, and on Friday officials said only 69 of them were open and available.
Across Southern California, a state-defined strip that includes Los Angeles and 10 other counties, the availability of intensive care beds reached 0% on Thursday and remained there on Friday.
While this does not mean at all that there are no beds available – as the state uses a weighted formula to ensure that some intensive care beds remain open for non-COVID patients – it still highlights the difficult conditions facing hospitals in the region.
The “system is in crisis,” according to Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of LA County Health Services.
“When ambulance unloading times reach up to four, six, eight, it’s a crisis. When hospital emergency departments are full, it’s a crisis. When there are not enough beds available at the right staff ratio, it’s a crisis, ”she said. “This is really where we are at.”
Hospitals have certain options to continue providing the highest possible levels of care when intensive care units fill up, including moving some patients who would typically be in the intensive care unit to other areas of the hospital, or keep them in the emergency room longer than normal. .
Even with these strategies in place, however, there may ultimately be too many critically ill patients for the limited number of doctors and intensive care nurses available – increasing the chances that patients will not receive care. they need and potentially increase mortality.
This is a particularly frightening prospect, as officials have said they expect the number of hospitalizations to continue to rise in the coming weeks.
Peaks in coronavirus cases can take two to three weeks to trigger a corresponding increase in hospitalizations, experts and officials say.
Two weeks ago, California as a whole recorded an average of 17,800 new cases of coronavirus per day. The average daily workload has more than doubled since then.
The fear is that a skyrocketing increase in cases could trigger a new wave of hospitalizations – further exacerbating the healthcare crisis.
Already, there are a record number of coronavirus-positive hospital patients, 16,019, and in ICUs, 3,447, statewide.
“We haven’t seen that volume of hospitalizations yet,” Ghaly said, referring to the most recent case counts. “These patients are still getting to the point where they may need care at the hospital level, and this will continue to strain the entire healthcare system.”
State officials previously estimated that 12% of newly diagnosed coronavirus cases would likely require hospitalization, with 12% of those ultimately ending up in intensive care.
As of early January, 1,600 to 3,600 COVID-19 patients could need intensive care beds in LA County if trends in virus transmission remain the same, according to forecasts.
Although healthcare professionals have continually honed their ability to care for the sickest COVID-19 patients over the past months – learning how to avoid placing them on mechanical ventilators if possible and use alternative means to getting more oxygen into the bloodstream; place people on their stomachs to allow them to breathe better; and giving patients steroid treatments, for example – officials and experts have long warned that a sharp rise in deaths is an inevitable consequence of coronavirus infections and hospitalizations snowballing statewide .
More Californians are dying from COVID-19 now than at any time during the pandemic.
More than 1,500 people have lost their lives in the past week – a staggering number that represents almost 7% of the more than 22,000 coronavirus-related deaths in the state.
The death figures seen on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday – 295, 394 and 288, respectively – represent the three deadliest days the state has seen throughout the pandemic, according to data compiled by The Times.
“It’s not the flu. It’s not something to play with, ”Governor Gavin Newsom said this week. “It’s a deadly disease, a deadly pandemic.”
Officials, however, are optimistic that California is near a possible turning point. The first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have arrived and hundreds of thousands more are on their way.
Hundreds of LA County healthcare workers have received a dose of the vaccine so far, and that number is expected to rise to 1,500 by the end of Friday and about 6,000 by Christmas.
“Our goal is to achieve 10,000 workforce vaccinations by the end of the calendar year,” said Dr. Paul Giboney, deputy chief medical officer of LA County Health Services.
However, the widespread inoculation is likely still months away, and given how fierce and widespread the transmission of the coronavirus is at the moment, officials say it is vital that residents do all they can in between. -time to protect themselves and their loved ones.
While healthcare workers and hospitals are doing all they can to treat those infected with COVID-19, “we can only react; we can’t stop the spread, ”Spellberg said.
“We need the public to listen to these mitigation strategies to slow the spread or we’ll be completely out of beds,” he said.
This means wearing masks in public, washing your hands regularly, and staying home when you are sick. Perhaps more importantly, officials say residents should keep their distance and avoid congregating with those they don’t live with.
While the latter request may be a bridge too far for pandemic-weary Californians keen to ring the winter holidays with family and friends, officials say some seeds of today’s virulent wave have been planted around Thanksgiving, when too many people were traveling or meeting in defiance of public health warnings.
Making the same choice this time around, officials warn, will only prolong – and potentially worsen – the outbreak.
“We are now learning a very painful lesson that despite how badly we want things to get back to normal, this virus is relentless and will continue to spread, making people very sick and tragically leading to death. of people, ”LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a statement. “We cannot afford another surge of the holiday season that will further overwhelm our already strained hospitals and healthcare workers. We all need to work together to avoid death as much as possible. “
Times editors Colleen Shalby and Soumya Karlamangla contributed to this report.
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