The state Department of Public Health said Friday that more than 47,000 new confirmed cases were reported, bringing the total to more than 2.29 million.
State hospitals ended the year “on the brink of catastrophe,” a health official said as the pandemic brought deaths and illnesses to staggering levels and some medical centers mixed to provide oxygen to the critically ill.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced Friday that California would begin collaborating with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to evaluate and upgrade obsolete oxygen supply systems at six hospitals in the Los Angeles area. .
The collaboration comes as older hospitals have difficulty maintaining oxygen pressure on aging infrastructure and some were struggling to locate additional oxygen tanks so that discharged patients could take them home.
This week, California became the third state to exceed 25,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
The capacity of the Southern California ICU bed is still at 0%.
“In the ICU, we are out of our capacity. We are creating spaces from scratch,” said Olena Svetlov, MSN, RN at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
The rest of the state is not much better. The San Joaquin Valley also has 0% availability in the ICU. The bay area drops to 6% and Sacramento to 11%.
Los Angeles County reported more than 20,000 new cases and more than 200 deaths on Friday.
Los Angeles County officials reported one death every 10 minutes, and asked people on social media to stay home and be safe.
But many ignored these requests on New Year’s Eve, with several public meetings being held throughout Southern California.
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On Friday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced its “super-distributor” task force, which made 90 arrests at five different locations last night.
Actor Kirk Cameron held another maskless gathering on Thursday, with groups of people seen on Point Mugu beach for a faith-based event.
It was a similar scene in Valencia, where hundreds filled a parking lot to sound the new year. Few who attended the open-air concert, hosted by Christian activist Sean Feucht, wore masks or physically distanced themselves from the Church of the Upper Vision.
Car enthusiasts gathered in Pasadena to do their annual New Year’s Eve cruise with the Rose Parade, even though the world-famous program had been canceled.
“It’s hard not to make those correlations between this vacation and the rise we see shortly after,” Shane Reichardt told the Riverside County Department of Emergency Management.
Meanwhile, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. topped 20 million on Friday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
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It is almost double the number 2 country, India, and nearly a quarter of the more than 83 million cases worldwide.
The United States continued to outperform other countries in COVID-19 cases, reaching 20 million at the start of the new year, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Deaths from COVID-19 have also increased in the country, now totaling more than 346,000.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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