In one day, nearly 40,000 new infections were recorded this week, although 98% of the state is under national order, according to state public health data.
Clearly this is not what people do.
Southern California is one of the worst hot spots in the country. The capacity of the ICU bed is zero.
This includes Los Angeles County, the most populous county in America. The dire situation has created a hellish landscape for health workers, especially those in the emergency room and Covid-19 units.
An “endless struggle”
Blake and others at Harbor UCLA Medical Center said the beds are being filled in the Medical Center’s Intensive Care Unit and overflowing patients are being cared for by the Emergency Department, which is also filling to the brim.
Only one bed is kept open, when the ambulance arrives, which it always does.
“There’s an endless struggle,” said Cliff Resurreccion, a nurse who works in the emergency room to help patients do the simplest thing: breathe.
Before his turn on Monday, Resurreccion said he learned that one of the patients he had been working with the day before had died.
“It’s pretty difficult right now. Unfortunately I didn’t have family to be able to see him and it was very sad during the holiday season for everyone involved.”
The heartbreaking deaths occur too often, marked by the lamentations of affected family members in the waiting room.
Nurses and doctors say they are exhausted and emotionally exhausted. But there is no truce as more patients arrive every day.
The head nurse, Blake, said the emergency room is also treating the usual complement of patients who show up with other serious injuries, such as heart attacks, strokes and broken bones suffered in car accidents.
As a result, the department struggles to find space to care for patients.
“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen. I’ve been here 40 years,” Blake said. “Some of the things these nurses see: their patients are dying. There are no relatives. So they take that patient’s hand or are on the other side of an iPad where the family is crying.”
He said it is impossible to forget the fear in the eyes of patients as they struggle to breathe. Blake is confident that staff will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
In the height of summer, the hospital treated about 60 Covid-19 patients at any one time, Blake said. Now the number hovers around 100 patients and he cannot transfer them to other hospitals in Los Angeles because they are also in condition.
Outside the medical center, two refrigerated trailers store the bodies.
“I hope I don’t cry because ten months have passed. We’re flooded. And the difference now between March and April is that everyone stayed home,” Blake said. “At first, people said nurses are heroes and they’re a fantastic job, and now they don’t listen to us. They don’t wear masks. They’re saying it’s a hoax.”
This week there was some hope on the hospital campus as a long line of health workers waited to get the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Cheerful music in the background.
But Blake sees the reality right now, which is a soaring infection rate and the uninterrupted flow of new patients battling the virus.
“I’m a glass half full of people. My glass is empty right now.”