LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Strict stay-at-home orders extended indefinitely Tuesday for much of California, a leading U.S. hotspot of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the state’s top health official said many hospitals were on the brink of crisis.
Severe restrictions imposed on social and economic life earlier this month were extended in densely populated Southern California – home to more than half of the state’s 40 million people – based on data showing intensive care units will likely stay there for weeks or nearly full.
The stay-at-home orders, one of the strictest in the United States, are also being renewed in the agricultural heartland of the San Joaquin Valley, where hospital ICUs have also stayed for weeks with little or no bed space left.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of California Health and Human Services, said Los Angeles County, the most populous county, has been hit particularly hard by weeks of rising infections and hospitalizations.
At least 90 percent of the county’s hospitals, he said, have been stretched so thinly by the influx of COVID-19 patients that they were forced to divert incoming emergency patients to other facilities over the weekend.
So far, no hospitals have formally informed public health authorities that they have reached the point of operating on a “crisis care” basis, with medical treatment and supplies to the sick patients being widely rationed, Ghaly said.
However, he added, “Some Southern California hospitals have put in place a number of practices that would be part of crisis care,” such as weighing “the effectiveness of certain treatments for certain patients who are unlikely to survive or do well. “.
Ghaly said he was not aware of any cases so drastic that, for example, doctors had to choose between two patients to be ventilated when only one was available. But he said hospital managers were doing everything they could to prepare for worsening conditions to avoid such dire scenarios.
“We could see the worst in early January,” he told reporters in an online briefing. “And most of the hospital leaders I’ve spoken to in Southern California are committed to that.”
The bleak projections are based on the expectation that, as they have done, many people will ignore public health warnings and mandates to avoid crowds and unnecessary travel for the remainder of the winter vacation, fueling further spikes in coronavirus transmission.
Authorities want to prevent a weakening of the state health care system as much as possible until the newly approved COVID-19 vaccines can be made widely available to the public in the spring.
Resident residents should largely stay indoors and avoid travel for the time being, except where necessary for permitted activities such as grocery shopping, medical appointments, individual outdoor activities, and dog walking.
There are also restrictions on many commercial activities, with takeout and pick up only restaurants and bars closed altogether.
Orders can be canceled as soon as forecasts show that a region’s available ICU capacity will be at least 15%.
The San Francisco Bay area and greater Sacramento are subject to the same restrictions, with ICU capacities hovering around 10% and 19% respectively. They each come early next month for their first three-week evaluation.
Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; edited by Grant McCool