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And at a California hospital, an outbreak possibly related to an air-powered inflatable costume at Christmas has sickened nearly four dozen employees.
Cases have skyrocketed after the Thanksgiving holiday and the impacts of the Christmas and New Year celebrations are still unfolding. As of Sunday, more than 20.4 million people have been infected with the virus in the United States and at least 350,000 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
And health experts worry about what will happen to those numbers if infections continue to spread.
“This is the total collapse of the health care system if we have another peak,” said Dr. Brad Spellberg, medical director of the Los Angeles County University of Southern California Medical Center.
“And we in the hospital cannot stop that. We can only react. It is the public that has the power to stop the spread of this virus by obeying the public health guidelines that have been published.”
“When asking what went wrong, we have to understand that this virus also occurred amid a surge and that much of the local capacity to be able to vaccinate was being used to test and respond to the surges,” Adams said. .
“We have to understand that it happened during the holidays and that people in health departments and hospitals also take vacations. But the good news is that we are seeing it increase rapidly thanks to our state partners.”
California Hospitals on the Edge
In California, emergency room officials said hospitals are treating an unprecedented number of coronavirus patients.
The increase has not spared hospital workers. At Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center, 43 emergency department employees tested positive for the virus between Dec. 27 and Jan. 1, according to a statement provided by CNN affiliate KGO, from Irene Chavez, senior vice president and manager. of area.
Chávez said in a separate statement that the medical center is investigating whether an air-powered inflatable costume may have played a role in the spread.
“A staff member briefly appeared at the emergency department on December 25 in an air disguise. Any exposure, if it had occurred, would have been completely innocent, and quite accidental, as the individual had no Covid symptoms and was only looking lift the spirits of those around them during a very stressful time, “Chávez said.
Chávez said in the statement that air disguises will no longer be allowed on the premises.
“If anything, this should serve as a very real reminder that the virus is widespread and often without symptoms, and we all need to be vigilant,” he said.
In Southern California, design and construction experts from the United States Army Corps of Engineers have been deployed to the Los Angeles area to “evaluate and, where necessary, upgrade oxygen delivery systems” on approximately half dozen hospitals.
An area hospital converted administrative offices and break rooms into treatment areas for its coronavirus patients, said Col. Julie Balten, Los Angeles District Commander for the Corps of Engineers.
Vaccines are given more slowly than expected
Federal government officials said they planned to vaccinate 20 million people by the end of 2020, but the results so far have been very short.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday that the United States has lagged behind in administering vaccines but expects momentum to pick up in the first weeks of January.
“But if you look at the last 72 hours, about 1.5 million have been administered into people’s arms, which is an average of about 500,000 per day,” he said.
Fauci said the United States is not where it wants to be in vaccine administration.
“We have to do much better,” he said.
Dr. Leana Wen, former Baltimore Health Commissioner, told CNN that the federal government needs to take a more active role in mass vaccination efforts.
“The problem is that the state and local health departments have been doing everything else in this response. They have been the ones who have figured out how to increase testing and contact tracing and public education, and now we want them to take on the responsibility too. Tasks of launching this mass vaccination campaign. They really need the help of the federal government, “he said.
The UK adopted that strategy to give the first dose to as many people as possible as quickly as possible, and said it provides some protection.
“We make decisions based on data. We don’t have any data to give a single dose and wait longer than the normal period of time” to give the second dose, Fauci said.
CNN’s Kay Jones, Jessica Flynn, Naomi Thomas, Chuck Johnston, Virginia Langmaid, Paul Vercammen, Holly Yan, and Christina Maxouris contributed to this report.
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