Patients with stretchers and wheelchairs need emergency care. Instead, wait for hours in ambulances or in the cold.
Southern California officials said the region is crushed of the coronavirus pandemic. There are no more open intensive care beds in the entire Southern California region and only more than 2% are available statewide.
California now has more daily cases of COVID-19 than India or the United Kingdom. The state has had nearly 150,000 new cases in the last three days alone. At this rate, the Institute for Health Metrics and Assessment predicts nearly 70,000 deaths in California and more than 560,000 nationwide through April 1.
Despite grim numbers and local restrictions, more than 84 million Americans are expected to travel during the holidays, which is a disaster for hospitals.
Dr. Elaine Batchlor, CEO of Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital, showed the “CBS Evening News” triage area set up in the bay of her ambulance. Her hospital is at the epicenter of the COVID-19 battle, located in a low-income, low-income community in South Los Angeles.
“I’m worried we could see ourselves in a situation like New York, where the health care system has been overwhelmed. And when that happens, patients start dying,” Batchlor said.
Batchlor said there is nowhere else to dispatch patients when each hospital is at capacity. Her hospital put several beds in the waiting room in the emergency room and in the hospital’s gift shop.
“We also have four tents in front,” she said. “We use every space we can find.”
The United States has so far vaccinated at least 50,000 Americans with the first dose of Pfizer vaccine. The goal is to give the first doses to 100 million people by April.
A second vaccine from Moderna is about to get emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. Once approved, six million initial doses will be delivered nationwide next week, and 20 million doses are expected by the end of the year.
Mola Lenghi contributed to this report.