Ambulances were alerted as hospitals in Los Angeles were flooded with COVID-19 patients

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 5 (Reuters) – Los Angeles health officials have told first responders not to bring in resuscitated adult patients to hospitals for treatment, citing a shortage of beds and medical staff as COVID’s latest rise -19 threatened to overwhelm the city’s health systems.

The orders, issued late Monday and coming into force immediately, marked a further escalation of measures taken at the national level by state and local officials due to alarming increases in COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

“Patients in fully traumatic detention who meet the current Ref 814 criteria for determining death will not be resuscitated and will be determined dead on the spot and will not be transported,” said Marianne Gausche-Hill, medical director of the Emergency Medical Services Agency in Los Angeles. in the directive.

Ref. 814 refers to the county’s policy on determining and pronouncing the death of a patient who was not transported to a hospital.

California, the most populous state in the United States, has been hit hard by the latest wave of coronaviruses that some public health officials attribute to Thanksgiving gatherings in November. Los Angeles is one of two counties reporting a lack of intensive care unit beds.

The condition of about 40 million people reported 72,911 cases of COVID-19 months, a record in a single day since the pandemic began.

Los Angeles County EMS Director Cathy Chidester called the situation a “hidden disaster” that is not clearly visible to the public in a county where COVID-19 patients died last week at a rate of just 10 minutes.

Ambulances were, in some cases, forced to wait a few hours for the discharge of patients, causing delays in the entire emergency response system of the county.

The United States reported a total of 20.8 million cases and 355.00 deaths through COVID-19. A record 129,000 COVID-19 patients have been in hospitals since Tuesday.

The worsening situation has put increasing pressure on state and local officials to speed up the distribution of the two vaccines approved for emergency use to protect against coronavirus.

Federal health officials said Monday that more than two-thirds of the 15 million coronavirus vaccines manufactured by Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. and shipped to the United States have not yet been administered.

But some health workers have started receiving their second vaccine with the Pfizer vaccine this week. Both vaccines require two doses every three to four weeks.

Governors in New York and Florida have said they will penalize hospitals that fail to distribute fire quickly.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told a news conference Tuesday. “If a hospital has made all its health workers, well, we’ll take that supply back and go to the essential workers.”

The US government is considering halving the doses of the Modern vaccine to free up supplies for more vaccinations.

But scientists at the National Institutes of Health and Moderna said Tuesday it could take two months to study whether halved doses would be effective. [nL1N2JG2A4}