An ambulance team waits with a patient outside the Coast Plaza Hospital emergency room during an outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Los Angeles, California, December 26, 2020.
David Swanson | Reuters
The Covid-19 outbreak is so severe in Los Angeles County that ambulances have to wait for hours to leave patients in emergency rooms.
Hospital beds are being piled up in gift shops, cafeterias and conference rooms, while hospitals struggle to find any space available to patients.
The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency told EMS officials on Monday to administer supplemental oxygen only if the patient’s saturation levels drop below 90% to conserve the depletion of oxygen supplies. Paramedics were also instructed not to transport adult heart attack patients to the hospital unless they could restore “spontaneous circulation” at the scene – to focus care on patients most likely to survive.
Los Angeles is facing an unprecedented increase in patients with coronavirus, which is pushing hospitals in the region to the limit. Public health officials warn that the already dire situation is expected to worsen in January.
“Many hospitals have reached a crisis point and are having to make very difficult decisions about patient care,” said Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of county health services, at a news conference on Monday. She urged residents to avoid the emergency room, unless they need serious medical care.
Hospitals have been pushed to the limit since December, when the capacity of the region’s intensive care unit rapidly dropped to zero, according to state health officials. More than 8,000 people are hospitalized with the virus in the county and 20% of those are in intensive care units, according to data compiled by the county’s public health department. With the virus circulating widely, public health officials are warning that conditions are likely to deteriorate before they improve.
Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and healthcare professionals treat patients outside the emergency room at Community Hospital of Huntington Park during an increase in cases of positive coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Huntington Park, California, December 29, 2020.
Bing Guan | Reuters
Across California, about 370 people die from Covid-19 every day, based on a weekly average – an increase of almost 46% compared to a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by the University Johns Hopkins.
In Los Angeles County, the coronavirus kills someone every 15 minutes, on average, said county public health director Barbara Ferrer during the briefing on Monday. The county surpassed 11,000 deaths in total Covid-19 on Tuesday, with 1,000 of them arriving in less than a week, the public health department said in a statement.
Everyone in the area must assume that they will be exposed to the disease whenever they leave home, said Ferrer. One in five people tested for Covid-19 in Los Angeles County has the virus.
“We are likely to experience the worst conditions in January when we face the whole pandemic, and that is hard to imagine,” said Ferrer. “The increases in cases are likely to continue for weeks as a result of the New Year and New Year holidays and the return of travelers.”
Stretched stick
Los Angeles County is still dealing with the Covid-19 flood caused by the Thanksgiving holiday and we have yet to see the cases that are likely to occur after the holidays in late December, Ghaly said. Hospitals are now trying to do “everything they can to prepare”.
Some coronavirus patients are forced to wait more than a day before an intensive care unit bed is opened for them, Dr. Brad Spellberg, medical director of the University of Southern California County Los Angeles Medical Center told CNBC by email .
A health worker checks patients inside an oxygen tent outside the emergency room at Community Hospital of Huntington Park during an increase in positive coronavirus cases (COVID-19) in Huntington Park, California, December 29, 2020.
Bing Guan | Reuters
The hospital had to relocate some of its healthcare professionals to treat the flow of ICU patients, meaning that there is no time to perform elective surgery or other life-saving procedures, such as colonoscopies, said Spellberg.
Governor Gavin Newsom said at a news conference on Monday that the state sent health care teams to the Los Angeles area to help reduce stress in hospitals. However, if there is another increase in Covid-19 cases after the December holidays, the additional staff will not be enough, said Spellberg.
“Our team is still overwhelmed, especially in the ICU. You can’t just create more nurses and doctors in the ICU,” said Spellberg in an email, asking people to continue following public health guidelines, such as wearing a mask, detachment physical and avoid crowds.
‘We are being crushed’
The increase comes as California, along with other states in the United States, began administering its initial Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
The state received just over 2 million doses of vaccines, but only 24% of them were administered, according to the state’s public health department database last updated on Wednesday. Newsom said on Monday that the process was too slow and that the state “wants to see things much faster”.
Ravina Kullar, an infectious disease specialist in Los Angeles and a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told CNBC in a telephone interview that she expects vaccines to accelerate in the coming weeks, although the injections will not work immediately. It takes a few weeks for immunity to grow, and very few are being given to develop the collective immunity that would protect the general population.
“I think we will see some kind of stability, stagnation and decrease in cases, but it will only take time,” said Kullar. “I think it will take until spring, summer, to really see an impact there.”
Kullar, who works in long-term care facilities and nursing homes in Los Angeles, said all of the facilities he works on are battling a Covid-19 outbreak. These residents, along with healthcare professionals, will be the first in line to receive vaccines in California when they are launched, Newsom said, adding that there are about 3 million people in the state’s first vaccination phase.
“We are being crushed,” said Kullar. “We have very few employees. I am exhausted, my colleagues are exhausted. It is a very difficult situation here.”
– The Associated Press contributed to this report.