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California hospitals are so flooded by the coronavirus pandemic that the state has ordered those with space to accept patients from others who are out of intensive care beds.
The public health order issued on Tuesday night could result in patients being sent to northern California from southern California and the San Joaquin Valley agricultural area, where 14 counties were immediately forced to postpone non-essential surgery “and that do not threaten life “to provide beds. The order, which will last at least three weeks, also applies to any county where the ICU’s capacity to treat Covid-19 patients is coming to an end.
“If we continue to see an alarming increase in admissions of Covid-19 patients to hospitals across the state, some facilities may not be able to provide the critical and necessary care that Californians need, whether those patients have Covid-19 or another condition medical, ”said Dr. Tomas J Aragon, state public health officer.
The order could be a thermometer for California, where authorities have warned that some hospitals may have to start rationing care if an expected increase after the holiday in Covid-19 cases puts a strain on the health care system.
The coronavirus is raging across the state and is expected to take many more weeks to contain the contagion. Los Angeles continues to see hospitalizations rise day after day, setting a new record on Tuesday, with nearly 8,000 hospitalized and more than a fifth in the ICU.
The county, which accounts for a quarter of the state’s residents, has more than 40% of the state’s 27,000 coronavirus deaths. One in five coronavirus tests is now positive, officials said. One estimate suggests that about one in 17 people in Los Angeles County currently has Covid.
Some hospitals in the region had to close their doors at times because they were overloaded, leaving ambulances waiting for up to eight hours and diverting others to different emergency rooms. Health officials recently began instructing ambulance teams not to transport patients to the hospital if they have virtually no chance of surviving.
Exacerbating stress in the hospital system, infections among medical staff are increasing. More than 2,200 people working in Los Angeles County hospitals tested positive for the virus in December, reports the LA Times.
On Tuesday, California formally requested that 500 federal medical professionals be sent to California to assist qualified hospitals and nursing homes after learning that the USNS Mercy Hospital ship, which docked in Los Angeles earlier this year for overflowing patients, was in dry dock and would not go back.
Meanwhile, state officials are struggling with an increase in cases of the UK coronavirus variant, which the research has shown to be more contagious. San Diego County reported two dozen more cases of the strain on Tuesday. “The fact that these cases have been identified in various parts of the region shows that this strain of the virus may be spreading rapidly,” said Dr. Wilma Wooten, a county public health officer, in a press release on Tuesday. .
In the San Joaquin Valley, the principal physician in Fresno County said he was watching what is happening in LA County “very closely” as the region prepared for an apparently inevitable increase from people who ignored the rules of social detachment. to gather for Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations.
“I am very concerned that we may see an increase in the number of hospitalizations and deaths related to the collection that took place over the holidays,” said Dr. Rais Vohra, interim officer in the county’s public health department.
Vohra said the county hopes to “increase an army of vaccinators” to immunize as many people as quickly as possible, starting with the hospital staff, but one obstacle will be convincing people to get the vaccine.
There is some research showing that about 50% of people in the county “are not ready for the vaccine right now” and are waiting to see if there are any side effects, said Joe Prado, manager of the community health division of Fresno County.
Distribution hiccups and logistical challenges delayed the initial launch of the coronavirus vaccine in the state, setting a pace that Governor Gavin Newsom admitted was “not good enough”.
So far, only about 1% of the state’s 40 million residents have been vaccinated, Newsom said this week. The 454,000 doses of the vaccine that have been administered in California represent just a third of the more than nearly 1.3 million doses received in the state so far, according to the California department of public health.
California is working to expand the list of locations where the vaccine can be distributed to include pharmacies, clinics and dental offices. The authorities are also conducting a survey of health professionals to find out how many of them do not want to get the vaccine, in response to anecdotal evidence that some are refusing it.
While the state wants to make sure that no one is jumping on the line, Newsom said it wanted to give providers the flexibility to distribute doses to people who are not on the priority list if the doses are at risk of being missed.
“We are working hard to ensure that 100% of what we receive leaves as quickly as possible,” said Ghaly.