California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Emergency Services Office announced on Thursday that a temporary morgue would be erected in the parking lot adjacent to the LA County Coroner’s building to deal with the record number of bodies it is seeing.
The facility will include at least five 53-foot trailers provided by the state and five more provided by the county, along with an unknown number of “ground-cooled storage containers”.
An AP photo taken on Thursday recalled images from New York last spring. It showed two temporary refrigerator trailers at the County-USC Medical Center in Los Angeles. A statement from the California Emergency Services Office contained photos of a similar trailer arriving in the hard-hit Imperial County. Altogether, according to OES, the state was implementing 88 of these units.
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Exactly 2 weeks after Christmas, Los Angeles County was hit by a dreaded spike in addition to Covid-19 cases; Health officials warn of an even greater increase
County statistics showed a total of 761 beds available in the county’s 70 “911-recipient” hospitals. There were 54 adult ICU beds.
These 70 emergency room hospitals have a total licensed capacity of around 2,500 ICU beds. Last week, the municipality had an average of 31 adult ICU beds available daily, with 78% of all ICU patients in the municipality being treated for COVID. Ten days ago, the percentage of ICU patients infected with Covid in those same hospitals was around 50%.
Los Angeles County reported its first count of more than 300 coronavirus-related deaths on Friday in 318. By comparison, an average of 170 people die in the county every day from all other causes.
The 318 new deaths bring the total pandemic across the county to 11,863. To make another comparison, this means more deaths in a year than any other cause of premature death, including heart disease, according to the latest county figures.
And now, according to the head of public health science in LA, Dr. Paul Simon, the record death toll and nearly record 18,313 cases of COVID-19 recorded on Friday are just the beginning.
Daily update of COVID-19:
January 8, 2021
New cases: 18,313 (889,405 to date)
New deaths: 318 (11,863 to date)
Current hospitalizations: 8,074 pic.twitter.com/mvUsPDT9FL– LA Public Health (@lapublichealth) January 9, 2021
“This is clearly the latest increase in winter holidays and New Year’s,” said Simon. “And it is likely to continue in the next few weeks or two. We expect these numbers to remain high in the coming weeks. “
The increasing number of deaths has created problems in some hospitals. These facilities are running out of space to store bodies, especially with funeral homes invaded and unable to accept more. A California National Guard team was previously sent to the county coroner’s office to help manage the increase in deaths.
California’s OES Director Mark Ghilarducci said in a video posted on Friday that he was implementing the State’s Multiple Victims Plan. “It is a mass fatalities management plan implemented in our law enforcement division,” revealed Ghilarducci.
“We work with our sheriffs, our coroners, our mortuary owners to ensure that there is a balance across the state, region by region, in dealing with the deceased and how we can ensure that we will not get large backups or, if we have backups, that they are treated with respect and dignity, ”said Ghilarducci of the plan.
One of the objectives is “that we have the appropriate equipment installed or the materials necessary for coroners and coroners to deal with the deceased”. He continued. “We will continue to work with each of our 58 counties to ensure that each of these people is cared for in the most respectful way.”
By an OES declaration:
In response to the needs currently expressed by county officials, Cal OES facilitated the distribution of 88 refrigerated trailers. Ten of these trailers were rented by Cal OES and are specifically designed to serve as temporary morgues. They were sent to locations in Imperial, Sonoma, San Bernardino, Monterey and Los Angeles counties. In addition, the Hub Group, an Illinois-based company, donated 78 refrigerated trailers to counties and hospitals within the State of California, whose distribution was mediated by Cal OES.
Since these trailers were not designed to be used as morgues, Cal OES is working to provide the right shelving to at least double the capacity of an individual trailer.
The City News Service contributed to this report.