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Hospitals in California are so overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic that the state has ordered people with space to take in patients of others who are not in intensive care.
The public health order issued Tuesday evening could result in patients being shipped from Southern California and the agricultural San Joaquin Valley to Northern California, where 14 counties are immediately ordered to postpone nonessential “ and non-life-threatening ” surgeries to beds. The order, which will last at least three weeks, also applies to any county where the ICU’s capacity to treat Covid-19 patients is bottoming out.
“If we continue to see an alarming increase in Covid-19 patient admissions in hospitals statewide, some facilities may not be able to provide the critical and necessary care that Californians need, whether those patients have Covid-19 or some other medical condition. , ”said Dr. Tomas J Aragon, the state’s public health officer.
The warrant could ring the bell for California, where officials have warned that some hospitals may need to start rationing care if an expected spate of Covid-19 cases after the holidays strains the health care system.
The coronavirus is raging across the state and it is expected to take many more weeks to suppress the contamination. Los Angeles continues to see hospital admissions rise day in and day out, setting a new record Tuesday with nearly 8,000 admissions and more than a fifth of them in the ICU.
The county, which accounts for a quarter of the state’s residents, has more than 40% of the 27,000 deaths from the coronavirus in the state. One in five coronavirus tests now comes back positive, officials say. It is estimated that about one in 17 people in the province of LA currently have Covid.
Some hospitals in the region have sometimes had to close their doors because they have become so overwhelmed, causing ambulances to wait up to eight hours and others to be directed to various emergency rooms. Health officials recently began instructing paramedics not to transport patients to the hospital when they have virtually no chance of survival.
Increasing the burden on the hospital system are increasing infections among medical personnel. More than 2,200 people working in LA district hospitals tested positive for the virus in December, the LA Times reports.
California formally requested the commitment of 500 federal medical personnel in California on Tuesday to assist hospitals and skilled nursing homes after learning that the USNS Mercy Hospital vessel, which docked off the coast of Los Angeles for spillovers earlier this year, was in dry dock. lay and did not return.
Meanwhile, state officials are grappling with an increase in cases of the UK variant of the coronavirus, which research has shown is more contagious. San Diego County reported two dozen more cases of the tribe on Tuesday. “The fact that these cases have been identified in multiple parts of the region shows that this strain of the virus can spread rapidly,” said Dr. Wilma Wooten, the province’s public health officer, in a press release Tuesday.
In the San Joaquin Valley, the top doctor in County Fresno said he was ‘very closely’ watching what is happening in the province of LA as the region prepares for a seemingly inevitable wave of people who are ignoring social distance rules get together for Christmas and New Year. Eve celebrations.
“I am very concerned that we will see an increase in hospital admissions and deaths from meetings that have taken place over the holidays,” said Dr. Rais Vohra, interim health officer in the regional public health department.
Vohra said the province hoped to “scale up an army of vaccinators” to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible, starting with the hospital staff, but will be a hurdle to convince people to get the vaccine.
There are some polls showing that about 50% of the people in the county are “not ready for the vaccine right now” and are waiting to see if there are any side effects, said Joe Prado, manager of the community health department for Fresno County. .
Distribution issues and logistical challenges have slowed the initial rollout of the coronavirus vaccine in the state, setting a pace that Governor Gavin Newsom admitted was “not good enough”.
So far, only about 1% of the state’s 40 million residents have been vaccinated, Newsom said this week. The 454,000 doses of vaccine administered in California represent just one-third of the more than nearly 1.3 million received in the state to date, according to the California Department of Health.
California is expanding the list of locations where the vaccine can be distributed to include pharmacies, clinics and dental offices. Officials are also completing a survey of health professionals to find out how many of them don’t want to use the vaccine, in response to anecdotal evidence that some are refusing it.
While the state wants to make sure no one leaps ahead, Newsom said it wanted to give providers the flexibility to distribute doses to people who aren’t on the priority list when doses are at risk of being wasted.
“We are working hard to make sure that 100% of what we get we get out as soon as possible,” said Ghaly.