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California hospitals are so flooded with the coronavirus pandemic that the state has ordered those with space to accept patients from others who do not have intensive care beds.
The public health order issued Tuesday night could lead to the expedition of patients to northern California from Southern California and the San Joaquin Agricultural Valley, where 14 counties were immediately ordered to delay non-essential “life-threatening” surgeries to provide beds. The order, which will last at least three weeks, also applies to any county in which the ICU’s ability to treat patients with Covid-19 is substantive.
“If we continue to see an alarming increase in Covid-19 hospital admissions to hospitals across the state, some facilities may not be able to provide the critical and necessary care that Californians need, whether those patients have Covid-19 or a another medical condition, “said Dr. Tomas J Aragon, the state’s public health officer.
The order could be a problem for California, where officials have warned that some hospitals should begin streamlining care if an expected increase after the holiday in Covid-19 cases overwhelms the health care system.
The coronavirus is spreading throughout the state and is expected to take many more weeks to quell the contagion. Los Angeles continues to see hospitalizations increase day by day, setting a new record on Tuesday, with nearly 8,000 hospitalized and more than a fifth of those in intensive care.
The county, which accounts for a quarter of the state’s population, has more than 40% of the 27,000 deaths caused by coronavirus. One in five coronavirus tests is now positive, officials said. An estimate suggests that approximately one in 17 people in LA County currently has Covid.
Some hospitals in the region have had to close their doors at times because they have become so overwhelmed, leaving ambulances to wait up to eight hours and divert others to various emergency rooms. Health officials have recently begun instructing ambulance crews not to transport patients to the hospital if they have virtually no chance of survival.
Exacerbation of stress on the hospital system are growing infections among medical staff. More than 2,200 people working at Los Angeles County Hospitals tested positive for the virus in December, the LA Times reports.
California on Tuesday formally called for 500 federal medical personnel to be deployed in California to help qualified hospital and nursing home staff after learning that the USNS Mercy Hospital, which docked in Los Angeles earlier this year for overflowing patients, was in the dry dock and did not return.
Meanwhile, state officials are facing an increase in cases of the British version of the coronavirus, which research has shown is more contagious. San Diego County reported two dozen more strain cases on Tuesday. “The fact that these cases have been identified in several parts of the region shows that this strain of the virus could spread rapidly,” Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health officer, said in a news release on Tuesday. .
In the San Joaquin Valley, the top doctor in Fresno County said he was watching “very closely” what was happening in LA County, as the region prepared for a seemingly inevitable increase in people who ignored the rules of social distancing to gather. Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
“I am very concerned that we will see an increase in the number of hospitalizations and deaths related to the gathering that took place during the holidays,” said Dr. Rais Vohra, interim health officer of the county public health department.
Vohra said the county hopes to “increase an army of vaccinators” to immunize as many people as possible as soon as possible, starting with hospital staff, but an obstacle will persuade people to receive the vaccine.
There are several surveys that show that about 50% of people in the county “are not ready for the vaccine at this time” and are waiting to see if there are any side effects, said Joe Prado, manager of the community health division in Fresno County.
Distribution hiccups and logistical challenges slowed the initial launch of the coronavirus vaccine in the state, setting a pace that Governor Gavin Newsom admitted was “not good enough.”
So far, only about 1 percent of the state’s 40 million people have been vaccinated, Newsom said this week. The 454,000 doses of vaccine given in California are just a third of the more than 1.3 million received in the state so far, according to the California Department of Public Health.
California is working to expand the list of sites where the vaccine can be distributed to include pharmacies, clinics and dental offices. Officials are also completing a survey of health workers to find out how many of them do not want to get the vaccine in response to anecdotal evidence that some refuse it.
While the state wants to make sure no one jumps ahead, Newsom said it wants to give suppliers the flexibility to distribute doses to people who are not on the priority list if the doses run the risk of being wasted.
“We work hard to make sure that 100% of what we get, we get out as quickly as possible,” Ghaly said.