California hospitals succumb to a surge in coronavirus cases

Los Angeles-Hospitals throughout California are almost short of intensive care units for COVID-19 patients, ambulances are backed up outside the emergency room, and the most populous state in the United States occurs in the United States.

On Thursday, the state reported an astonishing 52,000 new cases in one day. This is the same as the average for the entire United States in mid-October. The daily record is 379 people. More than 16,000 people across California are infected with the coronavirus, more than triple the number a month ago.

While the surge of viruses has pushed hospitals across the country to the limit in recent weeks, the crisis is in California, even with this week’s nationwide rollout of COVID-19 vaccination and the imminent release of a second vaccine. It is deepening at an amazing speed. It boosted the hope of finally defeating the tragedy.

Intensive care units have less than 1% capacity in many counties in California and lack space for morgues, more and more similar to the disaster in New York City last spring.

At the St. Mary’s Medical Center in Apple Valley, Southern California, patients were triaged outside the tent, and the hospital installed a temporary wall in the lobby to increase space for treating patients with COVID-19. .. The hospital’s chief executive, Randall Castillo, said the patient was also being treated for several days in the Gurney and chair halls because he had nowhere else to go.

Dr. Nasim Afsar, Chief Operating Officer of UCI Health in Orange County, explained the patient’s relentless termination. Many patients were waiting in the emergency room until beds opened elsewhere in the hospital.

“We work every day, discharge the right number of people, and by the next day all those beds will be full again,” she said. “Bottleneck is a large number of patients who need to come to the emergency room and be hospitalized, and there is no bed for them.”

Dr. Denise Whitfield, a doctor in the emergency room at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said the ambulance crew was waiting for the patient to be seen.

“In the last nine months we’ve been dealing with this COVID pandemic, it’s the worst I’ve seen in terms of seeing the ability to care for our patients,” she said. ..

Authorities are planning to build field hospitals in multiple locations throughout the state, three of which will be in Orange County.

The virus kills more than 300,000 Americans, and the country has an average of more than 2,500 deaths and more than 215,000 new cases per day. The number of COVID-19 patients nationwide exceeds a record high of 113,000.

Similarly, other hospitals across the country are short of ICU beds, so patients are parked in the ER, adults are transferred to children’s hospitals, and staff from outside the state are brought in for treatment in temporary wards.

Physicians are faced with tough decisions to control the number of cases. Some hospitals send low-risk COVID-19 patients with oxygenation and monitoring to their homes to free beds for critically ill patients.

Some states are preparing for the possibility of ration-based care if hospitals are further overwhelmed. For example, if the hospital does not have enough ventilators, doctors must make painful decisions about which patients to wear ventilators.

Top public health leaders in Idaho paved the way last week for the state to resort to rations as needed, or to impose so-called critical standard treatments. Hospitals need to use limited resources to provide potentially life-saving treatments to patients who are most likely to survive.

In Texas, many intensive care units are full or approaching capacity. On Wednesday, authorities reported that more than 700 ICU beds were open throughout the state.

In St. Louis, where the intensive care unit is about 90% full, hospitals had to double the number of patients in the ICU room and pull nurses out of the operating room to help them in the intensive care unit, St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic said. Task force.

He said the hospital had to refuse transfers from outside the area, and in at least one case the patient was taken to Illinois because there was no ICU bed in the St. Louis area.

Garza said overworked health care workers can only sustain this for a long time. “You will burn them out, make them sick, or something will happen.”

Hospitalizations in California are now double the peak in summer. The state has invited more than 500 additional staff and placed them throughout the state, but most do not have the skills to support ICU. The state is looking for a total of 3,000 contracted medical staff.

The Fresno County hospital system is so tense that authorities have hired an external team of 31 doctors, nurses and support staff to help treat patients in temporary wards.

In the farm-rich Central Valley, where hospital space is rapidly declining, health officials say Latino and migrant agricultural worker areas are burdened by lack of access to transportation and health care. I will. High incidence of illness and distrust of the drug. A crowded multi-generational household. And work that does not allow people to work from home.

“They are frontline workers, they work in our grocery store, they work in sanitary facilities. They can’t stay home. They don’t have the luxury of working from home,” Kaiser Permanente said. Dr. Piero Garzalo, an infectious disease specialist in Manente Central Valley, says. “How can I isolate when I live in a 1,000-square-foot apartment with five people, including grandpa and grandma?”

–By ALANNA DURK INRICHER and JOHNANT CZAKAP communication. Richer reported from Boston. Associated Press reporters Amy Taxine of Orange County, Olga R. Rodriguez of San Francisco, Heaven Daily of California, and Paul Weber of Austin, Texas contributed to this report.

•••

How the coronavirus spreads in Florida: Find the latest county, city, or zip code.

Q & A about vaccines: Do you have questions about the coronavirus vaccine? Florida, I have the answer.

Face mask: Read the latest information on guidelines, comfort and long-term wear tips

Get the Day Starter Morning Update: Sign up for the latest information..

Coronavirus Scrapbook: We have collected your stories, photos, songs, recipes, diaries and more to show you what life was like during a pandemic.

A tribute to the Floridians taken by the coronavirus: They were parents and retirees, police officers and doctors, imperfect but deeply loved.

Do you have any hints? : Send us confidential news tips

We are working hard to keep you up to date with the latest news about Florida’s coronavirus. This task requires a lot of resources to collect and update. If you haven’t subscribed yet Consider purchasing a print or digital subscription.