On New Year’s Eve, Los Angeles County reported a third consecutive day of record coronavirus-related deaths. The count was another 290 lives lost, although some of them are due to delays in holiday weekend reports.
The region has set increasing records of daily deaths in the past three days. As a result, Los Angeles County recorded its 10,000th virus-related death on Wednesday.
California in general also set a historic record, with 432 Covid-related deaths on Wednesday. That figure represents a 617% daily increase in mental numbness last month. Over 14 days, Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday, “there are 3,477 lives lost.”
Daily deaths in the United States surpassed that mark by one day on Wednesday and Thursday, when the count rose to 3,744. There are more than 1,000 Americans dying each day than in early December.
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LA County reported another 15,129 new cases on Wednesday, with 7,546 people hospitalized while the increase in deaths overwhelmed LA morgues.
“Many morgues across the county are filling up and are having trouble trying to make space,” said LA Director of Health Services, Dr. Christina Ghaly, on Wednesday. Ghaly oversees four hospitals administered by the county. “This is causing a backup of bodies at various facilities across the county.” Ghaly said the county is “working with these facilities to try to find alternatives to store these bodies”.
The HS director also said that the LA county morgue, which she oversees, had “386 open spaces at the end of yesterday”. The problem, she said, was with “private hospitals that are facing problems with backing up bodies due to the mortuaries’ overcapacity.” The county coroner took on that ability – or lack thereof.
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer offered an idea of how extreme the number of daily deaths was.
The average daily number of deaths from the virus in 14 days, according to Ferrer, is about 150. This is “almost equal to the number of deaths from all other causes, which is about 170” per day, she said.
To emphasize the scale of the losses, Ferrer’s department began Thursday to post small deaths for Angelenos whose lives were taken by the virus. New obituaries appeared every 10 minutes, the rate at which Covid-19 is killing Los Angeles residents. The posts started at 12:01 pm on the 31st and will end when the clock reads 2021.
The kindergarten teacher at the local school. # Every10Minutes #LACounty
Please physically distance yourself. Decrease the spread. Save a life.
– LA Public Health (@lapublichealth) December 31, 2020
The percentage of patients infected with Covid who are now sent to the ICU increased from 20% last week to 26% on Wednesday. Therefore, it is not just the virus that is proving fatal, but also the nightmare scenario of Angelenos dying because they cannot receive adequate care in crowded ICUs.
“The impact of this current wave is overwhelming our hospitals and increasing deaths,” warned Ferrer.
Given the amount of travel and mixing that supposedly took place over the holidays, said Ferrer, “we need to be prepared for an increase in addition to that increase.”
“We all need to be prepared for another increase that will start with even greater case numbers in early January,” said Ferrer. “The increase in cases always translates into more and more people being rushed to already overcrowded hospitals and, tragically, it also results in more people continuing to die.”
And that without calculating the impact of SARS-CoV-2 VOC 202012/01, or more simply B.1.1.7. This is the new variant of the virus that was first reported in the UK and has now arrived in California. The first occurrence of the variant in the region was identified on Wednesday in a 30-year-old San Diego man. B.1.1.7 is considered 50-70% more infectious, although not more deadly.
But with Los Angeles hospitals overburdened, an increase in infections would eventually mean an increase in deaths, as those who need treatment cannot get it.
The city’s news service contributed to this report.