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(CNN) – In a Los Angeles hospital there are five tents outside, one that serves as a waiting room.
Many patients are admitted to Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, some are in the gift shop, a chapel, or a conference room.
Over the past week, nearly 100,000 coronavirus cases have been reported in Los Angeles County, and that causes problems for what to do with other patients.
The hospital’s executive director, Dr. Elaine Batchlor, told CNN on Monday: “If we continue to see an increase in the number of Covid patients, we may be forced to do something in which, as healthcare professionals We all hate having to think. “
She was talking about rationing attention. Right now, it is not business as usual.
“Our staff has been incredibly skilled and flexible in accommodating an ever-increasing number of patients, so as you heard, we have five tents outside the hospital,” Batchlor said. “We have patients in our conference room, in our chapel.”
Many stretchers are brought to the gift shop, he said.
While Batchlor did not specify how many new patients have Covid, the increase in their number is putting an emphasis on all of the care.
Batchlor said the hospital will not turn patients away, but may have to employ techniques that have been used during the war.
“We use what on the battlefield is called triage techniques, which is to do an assessment of the needs and prognosis of each person and use scarce resources with the patients who are most likely to benefit from them,” he said.
Los Angeles County Health Services Director Christina Ghaly said some hospitals are treating patients who are still in ambulances.
“Those patients are being seen and treated in the ambulance like it’s part of the ER bay,” Ghaly said.
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said there have been 97,472 new cases in the past seven days. “The sad reality is that all the indicators show us that our situation can only get worse from 2021,” he said.
Hospitalizations reach an all time high
More Americans were hospitalized last week than any other week of the pandemic, according to the Covid Tracking Project. And the United States reported 121,235 current hospitalizations for Covid-19 on Monday, a pandemic high.
Six states set records Sunday for the most hospitalized Covid-19 patients: Alabama, California, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina. Texas hit an all-time high on Monday.
Doctors say the mass gatherings during the holidays will bring in more patients, a big problem because many hospitals are already over capacity.
“It’s really frustrating, because if you look at the data for the last 10 days, they actually started to show some signs of light,” said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at George Washington University.
“Places like the Midwest, with a drop in the number of cases. Even in the Northeast. The US positivity rate dropped from about 12% to about 10%. Those are really tangible signs of a slowdown. from the crisis. And now there will almost certainly be another peak. “
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And unlike the previous holidays, the Christmas-New Years combo runs for an entire week.
“We know that after every major holiday, there was an increase in the number of cases,” said emergency medicine doctor Dr. Leana Wen.
“We saw this after Memorial Day, after July 4, after Labor Day. And those holidays were relatively short compared to Christmas and New Years.”
On top of that, the weather is much colder now, which means more indoor gatherings and a higher risk of aerosol spread.
Patients occupy more and more ICU beds
ICUs are often associated with heart attacks and car accidents, but a growing number of ICU beds are occupied by Covid-19 patients.
Last week, about 40% of all ICU patients in the US had Covid-19, according to an analysis of CNN data released Monday by the US Department of Health and Human Services.
That’s a 16% increase at the end of September; 22% at the end of October; and 35% at the end of November.
And more hospitalizations inevitably precede more deaths.
More than 63,000 Americans have died so far this month, the most in any month since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University.
In just 11 months, more than 334,000 people have died from Covid-19. That means more than 1 in 1,000 Americans has died from the coronavirus.
And with most Americans unable to get vaccinated until well into next year, the United States faces a “surge” after vacation travel, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Health.
The new travel requirements go into effect Monday
As more countries detect the highly contagious strain of coronavirus first detected in the UK, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced new testing requirements for travelers arriving from the UK.
The new rules go into effect Monday. Passengers must have had a negative antigen or PCR test within 72 hours of boarding a flight from the UK to the US, along with documentation of their lab results.
The airlines must confirm the test before the flight.
So far, dozens of countries have banned UK travelers.
All viruses mutate over time, and the new coronavirus has mutated before. But scientists advising the UK government estimated that this strain could be up to 70% more effective at spreading than others.
The companies behind the first two vaccines to gain emergency clearance in the US, Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna, are testing their vaccines to confirm whether they are effective against the new strain.
The biotech company Novavax, which announced Monday the launch of a phase 3 trial of its Covid-19 vaccine in the US, said it is also testing its vaccine against the UK strain.
Results will take weeks, the company said.
Launch of the vaccine is slower than expected
About 2.1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the US, according to the CDC. More than 11.4 million doses have been distributed.
Those numbers now include both the Pfizer / BioNTech and Modern Covid-19 vaccines. And while there are data submission delays, federal officials had previously said they were working to distribute 20 million doses by the end of the year.
When asked about the apparent slowness of vaccine rollout, Fauci said large comprehensive vaccine programs with a new vaccine start slowly before gaining momentum.
“I’m pretty sure that as we gain more and more momentum, transitioning from December to January and then February to March, I think we’ll catch up with the projection,” he said.
Dr. Esther Choo, professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, said vaccine delivery is “just a very complicated thing.”
“At every step, there is complexity and there is the possibility of delays, whether it be individual state planning, assignment, training, vaccine supply, storage … there are so many factors at this stage,” Choo said.
“We need to be prepared for the fact that it will be a slow rollout in many places and that it will not change our behaviors or necessarily the trajectory of the pandemic in this country any time soon,” Choo said.
With vaccines likely not being widely available until summer, experts have urged Americans not to let their guard down. That means keeping wearing masks, washing your hands frequently, and social distancing.
This story was first published on CNN.com, “Rising Coronavirus Admissions Prompts Los Angeles Hospital to Use Chapel and Gift Shop for New Patients.”
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