Coronavirus Covid-19: California Hospitals Fight For Case Explosion

California hospitals are scrambling to find beds to house patients amid fears that the rising coronavirus infection rate will deplete healthcare workers and resources.

As of Friday, nearly 17,000 people were hospitalized with confirmed or suspected Covid-19 infections, more than double the previous peak reached in July, and a state model that uses current data to forecast future trends shows the number could reach an unfathomable 75,000. mid-January.

More than 3,500 confirmed or suspected Covid-19 patients were in intensive care units.

Some areas of California are “just on the cusp of being overrun,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, during an event hosted by the California State University system.

Corona Regional Medical Center in southeast Los Angeles has converted a former emergency room to help handle nearly double the usual number of ICU patients. You are using space in two disaster tents to classify ER patients because the ER is full of patients who need to be hospitalized.

Ambulances can sit for two hours unless they bring in patients with critical life-threatening emergencies.

“There is no room at the inn, so to speak,” said the hospital’s executive director, Mark Uffer.

“Literally every corner of the hospital is being used.”

It’s a scene that takes place in California. According to state data on Friday, all of Southern California and the 12 counties in the San Joaquin Valley to the north had exhausted their regular capacity in the intensive care unit and some hospitals have begun to use the “surge” space.

In heavily damaged Fresno County in central California, a new 50-bed alternative care facility opened Friday near the community’s Regional Medical Center. Beds for Covid-19 negative patients will free up space in area hospitals, where only 13 of the 150 ICU beds were available Friday, said Dan Lynch, the county’s director of emergency medical services.

Lynch said he expects they will have to use the Fresno Convention Center, which can accommodate up to 250 patients, given current demand.

Fresno and three neighboring counties have also taken the unprecedented step of sending paramedics on emergency calls to screen people. They won’t take them to the emergency room if they can go to an urgent care center or wait a few days to speak with their doctors, Lynch said.

Some hospitals have canceled non-essential elective surgeries, such as hip replacements, which could require beds that will soon be needed for Covid-19 patients. Others are increasing staff hours or moving patients to free up space.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat this. They’re crushing us,” said Dr. Brad Spellberg, medical director of the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, which has more than 600 beds and is one of the largest hospitals in the county. .

Spellberg said that every day for the past week at her hospital has started with no intensive care beds available and a struggle to find space in spaces that generally don’t handle critically ill patients, such as post-operative recovery areas.

“And it’s not just about COVID patients,” he said. “They are car accidents, heart attacks and victims of violence. They need a place to go for intensive care.”

Increasing demand may also be depleting human resources

“We still have physical beds available, but we need staff to care for patients. It doesn’t do much good to sit in a bed without being cared for,” said Dr. Amy Herold, chief medical officer at Queen of the Valley Medical Center at Napa, he told the San Francisco Chronicle.

“People are working overtime over and over again and they are exhausted and things are getting worse.”

John Chapman, president and CEO of San Antonio Regional Hospital in Upland, said telemetry nurses monitoring patients’ vital signs shouldn’t supervise more than four people but could end up accepting five or six due to number of cases.

“It definitely increases the risk that something will go wrong,” he said.

Many emergency rooms have already been using outdoor tents to make more space, said Dr. Marc Futernick, an emergency room physician in Los Angeles who sits on the board of directors for the California chapter of the American College of Physicians. of emergency. A hospital that has maxed out its outdoor overflow tent is expanding to a nearby gym, he said.

However, coronavirus cases have not peaked in this third and most devastating wave, and that means more drastic measures are on the horizon.

Care rationing “is right around the corner,” Futernick said. “There is no feasible way to avoid this. The numbers are too large.”

As of Friday, the nation’s most populous state recorded more than 41,000 new confirmed cases and 300 deaths, both among the highest single-day totals during the pandemic. In the last week, California has reported more than a quarter of a million cases and 1,500 deaths.

California has started receiving new Covid-19 vaccines. But the available doses are too low and too late to have an immediate impact on increasing the infection rate.

The latest explosion of cases has been linked to people ignoring social distancing rules over the Thanksgiving holiday. Health officials and workers expressed frustration that many people are not following state-mandated safety rules designed to reduce that rate.

“Whatever comes up, I don’t think any of us can handle it,” Uffer said. “You have a dam that is about to break and you have to stop putting water in the dam.”

If people don’t cut back on upcoming vacation trips and gatherings, the state could see an “increase over a sudden increase,” Fauci said.

“I’m afraid it will be worse than what we saw in New York,” Futernick said. “When New York hospitals were overwhelmed, healthcare providers came from all over the country.”

“None of that is happening right now, and there’s no way it’s happening because all the venues are taken,” Futernick said.

“The cavalry is not coming.”