California health officials are bracing for the potential for a new round of infections at Christmas parties, although it may take several weeks to determine how bad that wave would be.
A wave of COVID-19 fueled by Thanksgiving gatherings brought hospitals across Southern California to the breaking point, with intensive care units with few or no beds available, low oxygen facilities and other supplies, and patients waiting hours to wait. attendance. Infections are spreading out of control and deaths are also reaching new highs.
It is difficult to know whether people followed the call of health experts and avoided large Christmas meetings. Los Angeles International Airport, however, saw an increase in passenger numbers, which some considered a bad sign.
“It’s getting worse, and we haven’t even reached the peak of Christmas or New Year, so I feel that the number of people who are going to die because the hospital system is beyond overloaded is going to skyrocket,” said a doctor at a county LA Hospital said.
Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington, said the California cases are being motivated largely by internal meetings.
Holiday celebrations that span multiple generations can be particularly dangerous, as young people, who are more likely to be asymptomatic, can expose older and more vulnerable family members. People tend to feel more secure at home and also have a false sense of security when they are close to their family members.
“These are your loved ones … You are more likely to take off your mask and let your guard down,” he said. Human beings are falsely programmed to feel “indoors is safe – indoors close to my friends and family is even safer”.
The next big test will be whether there are many meetings on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in an interview last week that crowded shopping malls are also a major concern. According to regional requests from the state to stay at home, shopping malls must have up to 20% capacity, but it is clear that these limits are not being met.
“This weekend we are going to take a look at the malls because the photos we saw are … another small disaster,” said Ferrer. “Occupation is expected to drop to 20%. But when you look around, they look more crowded than 20%. And that just means a thorough analysis of what we are demanding. ”
Inspectors will be leaving during the postnatal weekend, said Ferrer, “and we will have to take a good look at what we see.”
“This is just a place where it would really be completely unacceptable to be crowded,” said Ferrer. “The only way to open these malls is because there would be no agglomeration. So, if there is a lot of crowding, this is a situation that we have to fix immediately. This can be fixed when shopping malls take more responsibility, or it can be fixed … by going ahead and checking if we need to change [health] orders, ”said Ferrer. “But I think the right place to start is to go and take a good look at what’s going on.”
Malls have recently been criticized by the LA County Department of Public Health. County investigators issue fines of up to $ 500 for serious violations of COVID-19 precautions. In shopping malls, this would include not prohibiting eating and drinking, not facilitating social distance in common spaces and not keeping occupation below 20% of capacity, among other security measures. The Glendale Galleria was cited last week. Citadel Outlets in Commerce has been cited four times and The Grove in Los Angeles twice.
Authorities are more concerned about the situation in local hospitals.
Patients wait up to eight hours in ambulances before entering the emergency room. With intensive care units with few or no beds available, health officials are asking people to avoid emergency rooms or calling 911 for assistance unless absolutely necessary.
Some hospitals in LA County are dangerously low on their oxygen supplies, a person familiar with the matter told The Times.
Oxygen is critical for the treatment of critically ill patients with COVID-19 who began to suffocate because the virus inflamed their lungs. So now hospitals need 10 times more oxygen than before. There were periods when hospitals were dangerously out of oxygen supplies before obtaining additional supplies, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Hospitals are also short of other essential supplies, such as special plastic tubes used to deliver oxygen to the lungs.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles County scientists have begun testing samples of the coronavirus from local patients to determine whether a potentially more contagious new strain that is circulating in Britain has arrived, as some officials believe is likely amid a huge increase in infections.
The variant is a concern because it can make the virus easier to be transmitted from one person to another, officials said. But, once a person has the virus, the variant does not seem to increase the likelihood that the person will die.