LOS ANGELES (AP) – California health authorities reported a record 695 deaths from the coronavirus in one day on Saturday, as many hospitals come under unprecedented stress.
According to the State Department of Public Health website, the death toll in California has risen to 29,233 since the start of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, there are nearly 22,000 hospitalizations, and according to state models, the number could reach 30,000 by February 1.
A spate of cases after Halloween and Thanksgiving set record admissions in California, and now the most critically ill patients are dying in unprecedented numbers.
Already, many hospitals in Los Angeles and other hard-hit areas are struggling to keep up, warning that they may need to ration care as intensive care beds are shrinking.
Every bed in the intensive care unit at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard is full, and emergency rooms are packed in Ventura County, about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles, the Ventura County Star reported..
When a code sounds blue in the hospital indicating cardiac arrest, nurse Yesenia Avila says a small prayer.
The codes have come in many times. During one shift, she said three COVID-19 patients died within an hour.
“We’ve never seen so many deaths,” Avila told the newspaper. “I’ve been in healthcare for 22 years and have never been afraid. Right now I am … I fear for my children. “
The biggest fear is that hospitals will switch to rationing care in a few weeks when people who ignore social distance rules get together with friends and family for Christmas and New Year’s Eve for medical care.
The post-Christmas spike worsened in Los Angeles County, where figures released Thursday and Friday showed a new daily caseload of nearly 20,000, significantly more than the average of about 14,000 new cases per day in the past week. A total of 100,000 new cases were registered this week.
With new figures released Saturday, the province surpassed 12,000 deaths from COVID-19 – 1,000 of them in the past four days.
“The speed at which we are reaching stark milestones of COVID-19 deaths and deaths is a devastating reflection of the immense spread across the country,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of public health for Los Angeles County. “And this accelerated spread reflects the many unsafe actions individuals have taken while on vacation.”
Dr. Paul Simon, the chief science officer for the County Department of Public Health, told the Los Angeles Times he expects hospitalizations and deaths in January to remain high because of what happened over the holidays.
“We will see high hospitalizations and, unfortunately, deaths in the next two to four weeks.”
Los Angeles County has one-fourth of the state’s population, but it accounts for about 40% of COVID-19 deaths.