(Newser)
– Los Angeles County hospitals are running out of oxygen for the treatment of patients with COVID-19 and are already out of intensive care beds. With patients waiting for hours in ambulances outside hospitals to be admitted, health officials are asking people to stay away from emergency rooms and not call 911 if they can, to help prevent the situation from getting worse. “Everything that concerns us and that we’ve talked about and warned people about since February is coming to fruition – we’re at that point now,” said a Santa Monica neurosurgeon. Hospital officials discussed rationing care. The county health director said that at this rate, almost 7,000 more people could die from the disease by the end of January, the Los Angeles Times reports. So far, in the pandemic, 9,305 people have died of COVID-19 in the county.
An ICU nurse said the nurses are running out. It seems that he hears every day that two or three of them took time off, by NPR. “You can see that many nurses have depression,” said the nurse, adding, “It’s much worse than before.” A chief medical officer at a hospital said, “You have nurses assigned to 20 patients, when there should be only five.” And more health professionals are testing positive for the coronavirus – 2,191 in the second week of December. Hospitals are running out of items like the plastic tube that carries oxygen to patients’ lungs. County health officials have asked hospitals to dismiss patients as soon as possible to make room for more. They fear that after the end of the holiday season, hospitals will face another surge in patients. “The worst is yet to come,” said a county health officer. (Read more coronavirus stories.)