The Covid catastrophe in the Los Angeles region has continued to push the healthcare system to the brink, with officials warning that the surge from the holidays and New Year’s Eve gatherings will further exacerbate the crisis in the coming weeks.
New Covid infections in LA county have been accelerating at by far the highest rate since the start of the pandemic. Over the weekend, officials announced that more than 800,000 people in the county had contracted Covid in 2020, with half of those cases occurring in December. Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles noted on Sunday that one person was now contracting Covid every six seconds, with one death every 10 minutes.
Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, Garcetti said the pandemic was getting worse in his city as the virus spreads rapidly within households and people let their guard down with news of the arrival of vaccines. “This is a virus that preys off of our weakness, preys off of our exhaustion,” he said.
More than 7,500 people are hospitalized in LA county, and the hospitals in southern California continue to have zero intensive care unit (ICU) capacity. The hospitals are so overwhelmed that some ambulances are now waiting up to eight hours to offload patients. The US army corps of engineers is also sending personnel to some LA hospitals to help them deal with a dwindling oxygen supply. And recently, health officials began directing ambulance crews not to transport patients to the hospital if they have virtually no chance of surviving.
There are ongoing major outbreaks at workplaces in the region, including big-box stores, grocery stores, fast-food restaurants, fire departments, film sets and at the LA international airport. The latest data shows that Latinos are disproportionately suffering in this current surge, and are now dying at two and a half times the rate of white residents in the county, according to the LA Times.
Meanwhile, anti-mask protesters stormed malls and grocery stores on Sunday in LA without wearing masks, raising concerns about further exposure to essential workers.
The increasingly desperate situation in southern California comes as US hospitalizations hit a record high over the weekend of 125,544. The current surge of cases shows no signs of slowing down.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, and others are warning that an additional surge is likely because of holiday gatherings and cold weather keeping people indoors.
“It could and likely will get worse in the next couple of weeks, or at least maintain this very terribly high level of infections and deaths that we’re seeing,” Fauci told ABC on Sunday.
Overall, California is reporting a daily case average of 37,845 positive cases per day, with hospitalizations up 18% in the last two weeks. An average of 336 Californians have died each day for the past week, said Gavin Newsom, the state’s governor, on Monday.
Around the state, intensive care units were stretched to the brink, with admissions increasing by 22% in the last 14 days. Marco Randazzo, a Santa Clara county emergency room doctor, said at a 31 December press briefing that some hospitals in the region were forced to care for ICU patients in the emergency department because their ICU departments were full. “Oftentimes the only way we can move a patient to the ICU is when a Covid patient has died,” Randazzo said.
Ninety patients are being treated at alternative care sites – federal field hospitals – Newsom said.
Agencies contributed reporting
