LOS ANGELES – Hospitals across California are running out of intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients, ambulances reverse outside emergency rooms, and tents for triaging the sick go up.
The LA Times reports that there are less than 100 ICU beds available in the Los Angeles County area, a metropolis of about 10 million people.
For the entire Southern California region, the state reports that 0% of IC beds are available in their daily update. The region includes Los Angeles, San Diego, Bakersfield and surrounding suburbs in an area of 10 counties.
On Thursday, the state reported a whopping 52,000 new cases of coronavirus in one day – roughly equal to what the entire US averaged in mid-October – and a one-day record of 379 deaths. Los Angeles County contributed more than 22,000 of those new cases reported Thursday.
The California Department of Public Health says some of that big increase in Thursday’s numbers is because they have processed a backlog of tests from the past few days.
The capacity of ICU beds is less than 1% in the central San Joaquin Valley region, it is slightly better in the Sacramento and San Francisco regions, which are 11.3% and 13.1% respectively. In Northern California, areas north of Sacramento and the Bay Area, nearly 26% of their ICU beds are available.
More than 16,000 people are in hospital with COVID-19 in California, more than three times as many as a month earlier. The LA Times reports that some hospitals in the Los Angeles County area require four to five hours of waiting before an ambulance unloads a patient to the hospital.
If a patient requires an IC bed and one is not available, it means that hospital staff must accommodate it in an area of the facility not normally designed for intensive care patients, which can lead to an increased mortality rate.
If California were a separate country, it would rank 10th in the world for the total number of coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, with 1,723,362, and 17th in the world for the total number. deaths from coronavirus, with 21,860.
Also on Thursday, the San Francisco Department of Public Health announced a mandatory 10-day quarantine for anyone traveling to the Bay Area, or anyone returning to the area after departure.
The mandatory quarantine health order applies to 9 counties in northwest California: San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, Solano, Sonoma, Napa, Marin and Santa Cruz.
Persons to be quarantined must remain at home without physical interaction with others outside their household, except in emergency situations or medical care. They are not allowed to go to work, school, or any other location outside their home for 10 days. https://t.co/MNRIwU5u2i
– San Francisco Department of Emergency Management😷 (@SF_emergency) December 17, 2020
The health regulation states that people who are in quarantine should not have physical interactions with others outside of their household, except in emergencies or healthcare.