California Health System Buckling Under COVID-19 Infection

LOS ANGELES (AP) – California’s health care system is embroiled in the nation’s biggest corona virus outbreak and health officials have warned that people ignoring the holiday community distance could cause breakdowns in weeks, with the number of beds and people in need of special care rising to levels previously unimaginable.

Top executives at the state’s largest hospital organization, Kaiser Permanent, Dignity Health and Sutter Health, which includes 15 million Californians, said Tuesday that increasingly exhausted staff, many of whom are on duty outside of their normal duties, are now arriving at stacked COVID-19 patients in hallways and conventions.

Dr. Elaine Bachelor, CEO of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles, said individually that patients there think of five tents outside the gift shop and emergency department.

“It simply came to our notice then. Dr. Alexis Lens, emergency room physician at the El Centro Regional Medical Center in Imperial County in the southeast corner, said we could not transplant them and get beds for them because we kept patients for several days. Of the state. The facility has set up a 50-bed tent in its parking lot and is converting three operating rooms to virus maintenance.

California closes 2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19. Nearly 32,700 newly confirmed cases were reported on Tuesday. A further 653 patients were admitted to hospitals – one of the largest jumps ever admitted to the hospital – for a total of 18,000.

State data samples predict that hospital admissions will exceed 100,000 a month if current rates continue.

Worrying more than the lack of beds is the lack of staff. San Diego-based healthcare company Aya Healthcare says the pool of available travel nurses is drying up, with California, Texas, Florida, New York and Minnesota asking for more staff, up 44% from last month. .

Dr Janet Kaufman, a professor of public policy at the University of California at San Francisco, said: “We are now in a nationwide operation.

California is reaching out to places like Australia and Taiwan to meet the needs of 3,000 temporary medical staff, especially nurses who are trained in critical care.

Across the country, explosions have been blamed for social distance and lack of masks during Thanksgiving, and officials fear an even worse uprising if people gather for Christmas and New Year.

Fresno County in California’s Agricultural Central Valley is in a very bad state. Community Medical Centers Dr. Thomas Eutect, Chief Medical Officer of Fresno, sees medical staff daily looking at distant families, desperate patients and people dying in isolated wards with their loved ones.

Doctors and health officials there are urging people to avoid gathering outside their immediate families.

“If people don’t stay home … we’m going to see it, it’s hard for me to even imagine,” said Dr. Patrick Macmillan, an immunologist in Fresno County. “I think it will break the health system.”

Similar warnings were echoed across the country from Tennessee to Mississippi and West Virginia, which saw an increase in the country’s worst new COVID-19 infection, which was higher than the previous rise in single-day viral deaths recorded on Tuesday.

The impact of COVID-19 is not limited to victims. Because of the lack of beds or nurses, other patients have long lines to the emergency room, such as a heart attack or trauma, and paramedics may not be able to wait immediately for an ER nurse to take charge of a patient. Answer another 911 call: Said Von Reinhardt.

In the midst of the uprising, the distribution of thousands of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to health workers marked the light at the end of the tunnel, but “it also feels like the tunnel is narrowing,” said interim Dr. Rice Vohra. Fresno County Health Officer.

“Trying to get people through this tunnel as safely as possible is a race against time,” he said. “It feels like we need to work on the front line right now.”

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Thompson reported from Sacramento, California. Associated Press reporters from the United States contributed to the report.