To make room for all COVID-19 patients at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles, employees have found a way to bring more people in for treatment: they are placing their apples inside the gift shop, chapel and conference room.
There are already five tents outside the hospital to help with the overflow. Dr. Elaine Batchlor, CEO of the hospital, said that CNN employees have been “incredibly skilled and flexible in accommodating an increasing number of patients”, but if the pace continues, they will have to start contemplating whether to ration care. . That, she said, is something “we really hate to think about.”
In the past seven days, Los Angeles County has reported 100,000 new cases of coronavirus, and LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said on Monday that “the sad reality is that all indicators show us that our situation can only get worse in early 2021 “. Batchlor told CNN that while patients are not rejected from their hospital, it can get to the point where “we use what on the battlefield is called screening techniques, which is to assess each person’s needs and prognosis. and use scarce resources with patients who are most likely to benefit from them. “
COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States reached a record on Monday, with 121,235 patients in the hospital, said the Covid Tracking Project. Looking at data published Monday by the Department of Health and Human Services, CNN found that in the past week, about 40 percent of all patients in intensive care units in the country had COVID-19, compared with 16 percent in the end of September, 22 percent at the end of October and 35% at the end of November.
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