Los Angeles hospitals take drastic measures to deal with the Covid-19 crisis

California health officials are resorting to drastic measures to reduce the paralyzing pressure in their hospitals, as the increase in coronavirus hospitalizations illustrates the high costs of the state’s failure to level the pandemic curve.

At Christmas, public health officials begged Californians not to meet – with family, friends or strangers – in a desperate attempt to prevent the increase in cases. New restrictions were imposed on much of the state last month in an effort to contain the upward trajectory.

The crisis, however, has not been averted: hospitalizations in the state have increased by 17% in the past two weeks, the health department said, with the use of intensive care units (ICUs) increasing by 21% as capacity decreases.

“The expected increase in winter vacation meetings has begun,” said Dr. Barbara Ferrer, director of public health for Los Angeles County, during a news conference. “We will probably face the worst conditions in January, since we faced the whole pandemic. And this is hard to imagine. “

California, the most populous state in the U.S., has been hit by the sustained rise in infections and hospitalizations by Covid-19 that swept the country. The United States recorded more than 20 million infections and nearly 350,000 deaths, while hospitalizations reach a record high – 131,195, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project.

The California Department of Health on Tuesday attributed 368 more deaths to the coronavirus, among the biggest one-day increases in the number of deaths in the state, and 31,440 new infections.

In Los Angeles County, which has 10 million residents, officials have taken drastic measures to deal with the enormous tension.

A January 4 memo from county officials told paramedics not to take patients who had an extremely small chance of survival to hospital. For example, according to the guidelines, a person seriously injured in a car accident and who cannot be resuscitated after at least 10 minutes should not be taken.

“Hopefully, this serves as an alert,” said Dr. Marc Eckstein, medical director and commander of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s ambulance service. “We are approaching the peak in the coming weeks, I suspect.”

He said ambulance operators had to wait hours to take seriously ill patients – of any nature – to hospitals, where emergency beds and pens were placed in almost every conceivable space, including parking lots.

“It doesn’t matter who they are, or their level of insurance, or whether they’re there for a heart attack or a gunshot wound or Covid – there are no resources,” said Dr. Eckstein, emphasizing that ambulances were still waiting in hospitals, the response time for all emergencies was increasing.

“We had very little ambulance today,” he said on Tuesday. “We moved firefighters from fire trucks and trucks to backup ambulances.”

Of his team of 3,500 people, 170 were currently suffering from Covid-19, Eckstein said, including three who were “fighting for their lives”.

State officials on Tuesday night ordered hospitals, in areas where ICUs are not available, to start delaying some surgeries and procedures – transferring these patients to less affected regions in order to free up capacity. “Serious cancer removal and necessary cardiac surgery” can still take place, officials said.

“This request helps ensure that patients continue to receive adequate medical services, better allocating resources available across the state to avoid overloading specific hospitals, counties and regions,” said Dr. Tomás Aragón, director of the public health department at California.

On average in the past two weeks, the state is registering 38,000 positive cases per day, with almost 300 deaths. According to the demographic analysis provided by the state, Latinos are disproportionately represented among the dead, accounting for almost half.

The large number of patients also created a lack of oxygen. In a separate directive for ambulance operators, paramedics were instructed to strictly ration any supplemental oxygen given to patients, with exceptions made only for patients with “severe breathing difficulties”.

Inside hospitals, plumbing aging has made it difficult to supply enough oxygen to so many patients at the same time, according to Dr. Christina Ghaly of the LA County Department of Health.

Members of the US Army Corps of Engineers were sent to seven hospitals – in Los Angeles County and neighboring San Bernardino – to update the oxygen systems and “bring in additional oxygen trucks”.

“We are trying to assess how we can reduce the pressure on its facilities and mechanical spaces,” Colonel Julie Balten, of the Corps, told reporters.

This effort was part of a broad “oxygen task force” created by the state that would work on obtaining more portable units, California Governor Gavin Newsom said at a news conference,

With hospitals under intense pressure, the state also faced criticism for being too slow in delivering vaccines.

So far, while 1.6 million doses of the Moderna vaccine have been distributed to health facilities across California, only 459,564 have been administered, according to the latest figures.

“We want to see 100 percent of what is received immediately administered in people’s arms, and that is a challenge,” said Newsom. “It is a challenge across the country. It is a challenge, by the way, for the rest of the world. But this is not an excuse ”.