(Newser)
– Los Angeles County hospitals are running out of oxygen to treat patients with COVID-19 and no longer have intensive care beds. With patients waiting hours in ambulances outside hospitals to be admitted, health officials are urging people to stay away from emergencies and not call 911 if they can, to prevent the situation from getting worse. “Everything that worries us, what we’re talking about and warning people about since February is being brought to fruition; now we’re in the moment,” said a Santa Monica neurosurgeon. Hospital officials have debated rationing assistance. The county health director said at this rate nearly 7,000 more people could die from the disease by the end of January, the Los Angeles Times reports. As of the time of the pandemic, 9,305 people have died of COVID-19 in the county.
An ICU nurse said the nurses are burning. He seems to feel every day that two or three of them have taken time off, for NPR. “It looks like so many nurses have depression,” said the nurse, who added, “It’s much worse than before.” A chief medical officer at a hospital said: “You have nurses who are assigned 20 patients when they are supposed to be assigned only five.” And there are more health workers who test positive for coronavirus, 2,191 in the second week of December. Even hospitals run out of items, such as plastic tubes that carry oxygen to patients ’lungs. County health officials have called on hospitals to discharge patients as soon as possible to make room for more. Once the holiday meetings are over, they fear, hospitals will experience a further increase in patients. “The worst is yet to come,” a county health official said. (Read more coronavirus stories.)