Ambulances were put on alert when Los Angeles hospitals were flooded by COVID-19 patients

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Los Angeles health authorities told first aiders to stop taking adult patients who cannot be resuscitated to hospitals, citing bed and staff shortages as the latest wave of COVID-19 threatened to overwhelm the health systems of America’s second-largest city.

The order, issued late Monday and effective immediately, escalated measures taken by state and local officials across the country in the face of alarming increases in COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Ambulances have been forced to wait several hours to unload patients at some Los Angeles hospitals, causing delays throughout the county’s emergency response system.

“Patients in total and traumatic arrest who meet the current criteria of Ref 814 to determine death will not be resuscitated and will be determined dead at the scene and will not be transported,” said Marianne Gausche-Hill, medical director of the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency. to the directive.

Reference 814 refers to the county’s policy for determining and pronouncing death on a patient who has not been transported to a hospital.

California, the most populous U.S. state, has been particularly hard hit by the latest wave of coronaviruses, which some public health officials attribute to Thanksgiving holiday meetings in November. Los Angeles is one of two counties in California reporting a shortage of intensive care beds.

California reported 72,911 cases of COVID-19 on Monday, a one-day record since the start of the pandemic.

VACCINE SALAD

More than 20.8 million people have been infected with the virus in the United States since March and the death toll is 355.00. A record 129,000 COVID-19 patients were in hospitals as of Tuesday.

The worsening situation has increased pressure on state and local officials to speed up the distribution of the two coronavirus vaccines so far approved for emergency use.

Federal health officials said Monday that more than two-thirds of the 15 million coronavirus vaccines manufactured by Pfizer Inc. and Modern Inc. and shipped to the United States have not yet been administered.

But some health workers began receiving their second shots of the Pfizer vaccine this week. Both vaccines require two doses of three or four weeks apart.

The governors of New York and Florida have said they would penalize hospitals for not dispensing shots quickly.

“It’s a matter of life or death,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told a news conference Tuesday. “If a hospital has done all its health workers, that’s fine, we’ll get that supply back and go to essential workers.”

Another 3 million doses of the two vaccines were sent to U.S. states on Tuesday, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller said in a statement, raising the total to more than 19 million in 21 days.

The US government is considering halving the doses of Moderna’s vaccine to free up the supply of more vaccines. But scientists at the National Institutes of Health and Modern Health said Tuesday it could take two months to study whether halving the doses would be effective. [nL1N2JG2A4}