LOS ANGELES – California hospitals have run out of intensive care beds for COVID-19 patients, ambulances are backing up outside of emergency rooms and stores for triage of patients are on the rise.
The LA Times reports that there are fewer than 100 ICU beds available in the Los Angeles County area, a metropolis of approximately 10 million people.
For the entire Southern California region, the state reports that 0% of ICU beds are available in their daily update. The region includes Los Angeles, San Diego, Bakersfield and the surrounding suburbs in an area of ten counties.
On Thursday, the state reported a staggering 52,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day, roughly the same as the U.S. average in mid-October, and a one-day record of 379 deaths. Los Angeles County contributed more than 22,000 of those new cases reported Thursday.
The California Department of Public Health says part of that large increase in Thursday’s figures is due to the fact that they processed an accumulation of tests from previous days.
The bed capacity of the ICU is less than 1% in the central region of the San Joaquin Valley, it is slightly better in the area of Sacramento and San Francisco, which are 11.3% and 13.1% respectively. Northern California, areas north of Sacramento and the Bay Area, have nearly 26% of the ICU beds available.
More than 16,000 people are in the hospital with COVID-19 in California, more than three times as many as a month earlier. The LA Times reports that in some hospitals in the Los Angeles County area, there is a four- to five-hour wait for an ambulance to unload a patient at the hospital.
If a patient needs an ICU bed and none is available, it means that hospital staff should accommodate him or her in an area of the facility that is not normally designed for nursing patients. intensive, which could lead to an increase in the mortality level.
If California were a separate country, it would rank 10th in the world in total coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, with 1,723,362, and 17th in the world for total coronavirus deaths, with 21,860.
Also Thursday, the San Francisco Department of Public Health announced a mandatory ten-day quarantine for anyone traveling to the bay area or anyone returning to the area after leaving.
The mandatory quarantine health order applies to 9 counties in northwestern California: San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, Solano, Sonoma, Napa, Marin, and Santa Cruz.
People forced to quarantine should remain at home without physical interactions with other people outside the home, except in emergency or medical care situations. They are not allowed to go to work, school or anywhere away from home for 10 days. https://t.co/MNRIwU5u2i
– San Francisco Department of Emergency Management😷 (@SF_emergency) December 17, 2020
The health order states that people in quarantine must not have physical interactions with other people outside their home, except in emergency or medical care situations.