California’s health care system is on edge due to covid-19 advance and could collapse in weeks

California’s health care system is overwhelmed by the progress of coronavirus in the state – the worst nationally – and could collapse in a few weeks if people ignore the need to maintain social distance during the holidays. year, warned the health authorities, who illustrated the request by indicating that the number of people in need of beds and specialized care is rising to previously unimaginable levels.

The main managers state hospital systems -Kaiser Permanente, Dignity Health and Sutter Health, which fully cover 15 million Californians– indicated on Tuesday that Their staff is increasingly exhausted, often burdened with tasks outside of their normal tasks and with infrastructure on their side – they come to see COVID-19 patients in halls and conference rooms.

Dr. Elaine Batchlor, CEO of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles, said this they even placed patients in the gift shop and five tents in response to the number of emergencies.

“We have no room for anyone. We keep patients for days because we can’t transfer them, we can’t take their beds. “said Dr. Alexis Lenz, an emergency physician at El Centro Regional Medical Center in Imperial County, in the southeastern tip of the state. The center placed a tent with 50 beds in its parking lot and turned three operating rooms into rooms for virus patients.

California is addressing two million COVID-19 confirmed cases. The state reported nearly 32,700 new patients on Tuesday, and by noon Wednesday (local time) is less than 40,000 cases apart from the symbolic figure. Another 653 patients were hospitalized in one of the largest daily hospitalizations. The total is already close to 18,000.

State data models predict this hospitalizations could reach 100,000 per month if the current trend continues.

Yet More worrying than the lack of beds is the lack of staff. The number of nurses available to travel from other states is running low, as demand for these professionals has increased by 44% in the last month. California, Texas, Florida, New York and Minnesota were the territories that made the most requests, according to the human resources company in the medical sector Aya Healthcare.

“Now we are in a situation where we have peaks all over the country, so no one has backup nurses,” said Dr. Janet Coffman, a professor of public policy at the University of California, San Francisco.

California goes abroad for holds the positions of 3,000 temporary medical workers, in particular nurses trained in the care of critically ill patients. He has posted jobs in countries such as Australia and Taiwan.

This latest and most virulent wave of COVID-19 in the United States is attributed in part to a lack of social distance and the use of masks during Thanksgiving. and authorities fear the number will rise further if people gather for Christmas and New Year.

County Fresno, in the Central Valley of Agricultural California, he is in a desperate situation. Dr. Thomas Utecht, medical director for the Fresno Community Health Centers, said staff see mourning families, desperate patients and people dying daily in remote areas while their families watch from a distance.

Doctors and medical officials begged the population to avoid gatherings beyond their immediate family.

“If people don’t stay home (…) we will see something that is hard for me to imagine”, said the doctor Patrick Macmillan, hospice specialist from Fresno County. “I think it will break the health system.”

Similar warnings have been issued across the country. Among the most affected states are those other than California Tennessee, which suffers the worst growth in the country in per capita cases, up to Mississippi and West Virginia, which on Tuesday broke records of deaths associated with the virus in one day.

The impact of COVID-19 is not limited to those infected. The lack of beds or nurses means that they also have emergency cabins long waits for other patients, such as those who have suffered heart attacks or trauma and that paramedics waiting for an emergency nurse to care for their patient cannot immediately respond to another emergency call, explained Dr. Anneli von Reinhart, Emergency Physician at the Center Community Regional Medical Center in the center of Fresno.

Against the backdrop, the distribution of thousands of doses of COVID-19 vaccine to medical staff shows some light at the end of the tunnel, but “The tunnel also seems to be narrowing”said Dr. Rais Vohra, interim director of Fresno County.

“It’s a race against time to try to get people out of the tunnel as safely as possible.”, said. “So right now it feels like you’re working on the front lines.”

(c. 2020 – Associated Press)

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