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– Los Angeles County hospitals are running out of oxygen to treat COVID-19 patients, and they already don’t have intensive care beds. Because patients have to wait hours in ambulances outside hospitals to be admitted, health officials are asking people to stay away from the emergency rooms and avoid calling emergency services if possible, to avoid making the situation worse. “Everything we’ve been concerned about and talked about and been warning people about since February is coming out – we’re ready now,” said a neurosurgeon in Santa Monica. Hospital officials have discussed rationing care. The province’s health director said that at this rate, nearly 7,000 more people could die from the disease by the end of January. Los Angeles Times reports. So far, 9,305 people have died from COVID-19 in the province.
An IC nurse said nurses are burning out. It seems like he hears every day that two or three of them have taken time off, according to NPR. “You can see so many nurses are depressed,” the nurse said, adding, “It’s so much worse than before.” A chief medical officer of a hospital said, “You have nurses assigned 20 patients when they should only have five.” And more health workers are self-testing positive for the coronavirus – 2,191 in the second week of December. In fact, hospitals are running out of items, such as the plastic hose that carries oxygen to the lungs of patients. County health officials have asked hospitals to discharge patients as soon as possible to make room for more. They fear that once the holiday meetings are over, hospitals will again be faced with an increase in the number of patients. “The worst is yet to come,” said a county health official. (Read more stories about the coronavirus.)