Home stay requests were extended on Tuesday to two major parts of California as hospitals were severely affected by the increase in Covid-19 cases, health officials said.
“We certainly know that Southern California hospitals are in crisis, and some have started implementing parts of crisis treatment,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, in a video briefing.
No facility has notified the state that it is fully in crisis care yet, but some in Southern California have made decisions that would be part of that, he said, including decisions on how to accept ambulances and personnel.
A hospital in Los Angeles turned its chapel into an overcrowded unit. Ghaly said waiting times have been much longer than normal in some emergency departments and that hospitals are using post and preoperative beds to care for Covid-19 and other patients, among other steps.
Governor Gavin Newsom warned on Monday that travel during the last week of the holiday would make anything but inevitable that the state would have a “sudden increase”.
Most of the state is under regional home requests that have required some businesses, such as bars, wineries and hairdressers to close and reduced capacity in others – requirements begin to emerge when a region’s intensive care capacity drops below 15 percent.
Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley remained at zero percent ICU availability on Tuesday, which does not mean that there are no beds, but that hospitals have had to increase their capacity. Orders have been extended until 2021 and will remain in effect until projections show that the ICU limit has been reached.
Los Angeles County health officials reported an additional 227 deaths from Covid-19 on Tuesday and said hospitalizations exceeded 7,000 for the first time in the pandemic.
“The suffering followed by more suffering continues, as many residents and businesses behave as if we are not living in the most dangerous moment of the most devastating pandemic,” said Dr. Barbara Ferrer, county health director, in a statement.
She begged residents to cancel New Year’s parties, saying, “We are each other’s guardians.”
More than 31,200 cases were reported across the state on Tuesday, and the positivity rate is around 12 percent, according to the state health department. It is higher in Los Angeles County, at more than 16%.
California had more than 2.1 million people with Covid-19 and 24,500 died, the state health department said.
Northern California is the only region that is not under a regional home stay order. Newsom said on Monday that among the biggest areas of concern are Southern California and the Los Angeles area.
Newsom said 96 percent of Los Angeles County hospitals were “under diversion” on Saturday, which means they cannot accept ambulances and must divert them elsewhere. Even in the pandemic, the figure was 33% before the current increase in cases, he said.
