A sudden increase in coronavirus cases can result in prolonged home requests for southern California and other areas.
The closest date that Southern California could have become eligible to withdraw from the existing order was Monday, but state officials said on Sunday that the region and several other areas of the state would likely have to continue following restrictions for more a few weeks, as the recent increase is pushing hospitals to the breaking point.
Restrictions include reduced capacity in retail stores; the closing of some businesses, including hairdressers, manicures, card games, museums, zoos and aquariums; and the ban on most meetings, hotel stays for tourism and dinner in open-air restaurants.
Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom expressed doubts that southern California and the San Joaquin Valley regions would leave the state order on Monday due to the constant erosion of beds in intensive care units for patients with COVID-19.
Hospitalization requests will remain in effect until the ICU’s projected capacity for the region is equal to or greater than 15%, as per state guidance. In the Southern California and San Joaquin Valley regions – which together cover 23 of California’s 58 counties – the current available ICU capacity is 0%.
This does not mean that there are no unoccupied ICU beds, as the state uses a weighted formula to ensure that some remain open to patients who do not have COVID-19. But officials and experts warn that an overcrowded ICU can overwhelm doctors and nurses, jeopardizing the quality of care for everyone, including COVID-19 patients, victims of heart attacks and those who were seriously injured in a car accident.
“The Regional Home Order is likely to extend to many regions of California,” the California Department of Public Health said in a statement on Sunday. When a county reaches the ICU limit of 15% capacity or more, it must maintain that status for four weeks.
The agency reported that the state has 2,122,806 confirmed cases to date, with more than 24,000 deaths. There were more than 50,000 new confirmed cases registered on Saturday.
On Saturday, Los Angeles County health officials reported 29,423 new cases of coronavirus on Christmas Day and Saturday combined. Friday’s numbers – 15,538 cases – were delayed due to an outage of Spectrum internet service in the Los Angeles area.
Local health agencies also reported 136 deaths over the two-day period. The county averaged about 14,000 new coronavirus cases a day and 88 deaths from COVID-19 a day last week.
Hospitals across the county are full. Some have a dangerously low oxygen supply, critical for the treatment of critically ill patients with COVID-19 who have started to suffocate because of their virus-inflamed lungs. Emergency rooms are so overcrowded that ambulances have to wait up to eight hours to drop off patients or are sometimes sent to more distant hospitals.
In one scenario, experts predict that there may be an increase in new cases of coronavirus in mid-January, an increase in hospitalizations in late January and early February and another outbreak of deaths in early mid-February.
The rapid succession of holidays in the fall and winter months allows people to celebrate and spend time with their loved ones in a short time.
But that leaves little time for coronavirus cases to start falling before firing again, creating spikes after outbreaks.
Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said that a person exposed to COVID-19 at a Christmas party could be infected on New Year’s Eve.
However, the individual may be asymptomatic, go to a New Year’s Eve party and without knowing how to spread the disease, he said.
Coupled with a high infection rate – about 1 in 95 in Los Angeles County are contagious with the virus, according to county estimates – the holidays are creating a “viral fire,” he said.