An ambulance crew is waiting with a patient outside the emergency room of Coast Plaza Hospital during a wave of coronavirus disease cases (COVID-19) in Los Angeles, California, December 26, 2020.
David Swanson | Reuters
The Covid-19 outbreak is so severe in Los Angeles County that ambulances have to wait for hours to leave patients in the emergency room.
Hospital beds are crammed into gift shops, cafes and conference rooms, while hospitals struggle to find any space available for patients.
The Los Angeles Emergency Medical Services Agency told EMS employees Monday to administer additional oxygen only if a patient’s saturation levels drop below 90% to save depleted oxygen reserves. Paramedics were also told not to transport adult patients with a heart attack to the hospital unless they could restore “spontaneous circulation” on the spot – to focus care on patients more likely to survive.
Los Angeles is facing an unprecedented increase in coronavirus patients pushing hospitals in the area a step further. Public health officials warn that the already dire situation is expected to worsen in January.
“Many hospitals have reached a time of crisis and have to make very tough decisions regarding patient care,” Dr. Christina Ghaly, the county’s director of health services, told a news conference Monday. She urged residents to avoid the emergency room unless they need serious medical care.
Hospitals were stretched to their limits at Decemer, when the region’s intensive care unit capacity dropped rapidly to zero, according to state health officials. More than 8,000 people are now hospitalized with the virus in the county, and 20% of them are in intensive care units, according to data compiled by the county’s public health department. Given that the virus is widespread, public health officials warn that conditions may deteriorate before they improve.
Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and health workers treat patients outside the emergency room at Huntington Park Community Hospital during an increase in cases of positive coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Huntington Park, California, December 29, 2020 .
Bing Guan | Reuters
Across California, about 370 people die every day from Covid-19, based on an average week – up nearly 46 percent from a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
In Los Angeles County, the coronavirus kills someone every 15 minutes on average, the county’s public health director, Barbara Ferrer, said at Monday’s hearing. The county surpassed 11,000 total Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, 1,000 of those who came in less than a week, the public health department said in a statement.
Everyone in the area should assume they will be exposed to the disease whenever they leave their home, Ferrer said. One in five people tested for Covid-19 in Los Angeles County has the virus.
“We will probably experience the worst conditions in January when we faced the whole pandemic, and this is hard to imagine,” Ferrer said. “The increase in cases is likely to continue in the coming weeks as a result of the holiday and New Year parties and returning travelers.”
The staff stretched thin
Los Angeles County is still facing the Covid-19 flood stimulated by Thanksgiving and has yet to see cases likely to follow in late December, Ghaly said. Hospitals are now trying to do “everything they can to prepare.”
Some coronavirus patients have to wait more than a day before an intensive care bed is opened for them, Dr. Brad Spellberg, chief physician at the University of California Medical Center, told CNBC.
A health worker checks patients inside an oxygen tent outside the emergency room at Huntington Park Community Hospital during an increase in positive coronavirus cases (COVID-19) in Huntington Park, California, December 29, 2020.
Bing Guan | Reuters
The hospital has had to redeploy some of its health care workers to treat the influx of intensive care patients, which means there is no time to perform elective surgery or other life-saving procedures, such as colonoscopies, said Spellberg.
Gov. Gavin Newsom told a news briefing Monday that the state has sent medical teams to the Los Angeles area to help reduce stress on hospitals. However, if there is another wave of Covid-19 cases after the December holidays, the additional staff will not be enough, Spellberg said.
“Our staff is still stretched thin, especially in the ICU. You can’t just create more nurses and doctors,” Spellberg said in an email, urging people to continue public health guidelines such as wearing a mask. , physical distance and avoidance of congestion.
“We are crushed”
The growth comes as California, along with other US states, began administering the initial Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
The state received just over 2 million doses of vaccines, but only 24% of them were administered, according to data updated Wednesday by the state department of public health. Newsom said Monday that the process is moving too slowly and the state “wants to see things go much faster.”
Ravina Kullar, an infectious disease expert from Los Angeles and a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told CNBC in a telephone interview that she expects inoculations to accelerate in the coming weeks, although the shootings will not work immediately. It takes a few weeks for the immunity to build up and too little is given to develop the herd’s immunity that would protect the wider population.
“I think we will see a certain kind of stability, a decrease and a decrease in cases, but it will only take time,” Kullar said. “I think it will take until spring, summer, to really see an impact there.”
Kullar, who works in long-term care facilities and nursing homes in Los Angeles, said every unit he works with struggles with a Covid-19 outbreak. Those residents, along with health care workers, will be the first to receive vaccines in California as they are launched, Newsom said, adding that there are about 3 million people in the first phase of state vaccination.
“We are crushed,” Kullar said. “We have a very small staff. I’m exhausted, my colleagues are exhausted. It’s a very difficult situation here.”
– The Associated Press contributed to this report.