There are now 98 trailers to help forensic doctors in the county store the bodies “with respect and dignity,” said the director of the Office of Emergency Services, Mark Ghilarducci. In Los Angeles County, where an average of one person dies every 6 minutes, temporary storage facilities have been set up in the parking lot adjacent to the coroner’s office.
The Office of Emergency Services uses state hospitalization data to anticipate how many people may die in the coming weeks. The state is looking at several models to try to predict hospitalizations and deaths. The projection of the “ensemble” that combines all the models estimates that another 10,000 people will die in the next three weeks.
It could be at least two weeks before the state knows the full extent of the damage caused by the virus during the holiday season, when many people have ignored requests to stay home and not gather with friends and extended family. On average, about 12% of all those who test positive end up in hospital, so if there is a wave of new cases, it will overwhelm hospitals even more. And more people will eventually die.
Ghilarducci said the state had activated its “mass fatality management plan” to try to avoid large backups in the morgue.
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“It is important to know that there is a plan, it is underway and it is active today,” Ghilarducci said. “We will continue to work on this with each of the 58 counties to ensure that all these people are cared for in the most respectful way.”
The gloomy forecast was in contrast to an optimistic news conference held Friday by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Gov. Gavin Newsom at Dodger Stadium, which is being turned into a vaccination center capable of delivering 12,000 doses a day.
California has received more than 3.5 million doses of the vaccine and given just over 1 million doses. Newsom said the state is on track to exceed its target of delivering about 1.5 million doses by Friday.
Newsom tried to shine an encouraging trend: hospitalizations, hospitalizations in intensive care units and positivity rates – the percentage of people tested who have the virus – have fallen in the last seven days.
The numbers were enough for the Newsom administration earlier this week to lift the residence order for the 13-county Sacramento region, which includes the state capital and Lake Tahoe, a popular winter tourist destination.
The move allows hair and nail salons and other businesses to reopen, and restaurants to resume dining outdoors and offer a slight increase in the number of customers at retail outlets.
“We’re starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, not just the light that vaccines provide,” Newsom said.
California – the nation’s most populous state with nearly 40 million residents – has seen an average of more than 41,000 new cases of coronavirus every day in the past two weeks, reducing previous outbreaks. While California has the second highest number of deaths in the country, the state ranks 39th in the number of deaths per capita, at 81.8.
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