Ambulances became alert when Los Angeles hospitals were inundated with COVID-19 patients

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 5 (Reuters) – Health officials in Los Angeles have told emergency responders to stop bringing adult patients who cannot be resuscitated to hospitals for treatment, citing a shortage of beds and medical staff as the latest COVID Peak 19 threatened to overwhelm the city’s healthcare systems.

The orders, issued late Monday and with immediate effect, marked a further escalation in measures being taken nationwide by state and local officials due to an alarming rise in COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

“Patients in traumatic full arrest who meet the current Ref 814 criteria for determining death will not be resuscitated and will be determined dead on the spot and not transported,” said Marianne Gausche-Hill, Los’s medical director. Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency. in the directive.

Ref 814 refers to the county policy on determining and certifying death in a patient who has not been transported to a hospital.

California, the most populous state in the US, has been hit particularly hard by the latest coronavirus outbreak that some public health officials attribute to Thanksgiving rallies in November. Los Angeles is one of two counties reporting a shortage of beds in the intensive care unit.

The state of about 40 million residents reported 72,911 COVID-19 cases Monday, a one-day record since the start of the pandemic.

Cathy Chidester, director of EMS in Los Angeles County, has called the situation a “hidden disaster,” which is not clearly visible to the public in a district where COVID-19 patients died at a rate of a very 10 minutes last week.

Ambulances have in some cases had to wait several hours to unload patients, causing delays in the county’s emergency response system.

The United States has reported a total of 20.8 million cases and 355,000 COVID-19 deaths. A record 129,000 COVID-19 patients were in hospitals on Tuesday.

The deteriorating situation has put increasing pressure on state and local officials to accelerate the distribution of the two vaccines approved for emergency protection against the coronavirus.

Federal health officials said Monday that more than two-thirds of the 15 million coronavirus vaccines manufactured by Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc and shipped within the United States have yet to be administered.

But some health professionals started getting their second injections of the Pfizer vaccine this week. Both vaccines require two doses three or four weeks apart.

New York and Florida governors have said they would penalize hospitals for not giving injections quickly.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at a news conference on Tuesday. “If a hospital has done all of its health workers, fine, then we’ll take that supply back and go to essential workers.”

The US government is considering halving doses of Moderna’s vaccine to release more vaccinations.

But scientists at the National Institutes of Health and Moderna said Tuesday it could take two months to investigate whether the halved doses would be effective. [nL1N2JG2A4}