Southern California will continue in the regional home stay order “until the ICU prognosis is above or equal to 15%,” said Health Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly today.
Currently, with hospitals diverting care and placing patients in hallways and elsewhere, LA County and the rest of Southern California are 0% intensive care utilization.
The first time Governor Gavin Newsom announced in early December, when the effects of Thanksgiving became increasingly evident, will now last through January 16.
The state will take a new look at the decision and the relevant virus data every day over the next few weeks to determine whether the restrictions need to be expanded again, Ghaly made clear on Tuesday. If the numbers change, the stay at home order could be canceled early – not that the near future looks promising.
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“We have to adjust to the transfer rates we expect from these celebrations,” said the CHH boss tiredly, an expected increase after Christmas in the next few weeks during this “difficult time”.
With the rise of COVID cases and deaths crippling the Golden State’s healthcare system, the latest expansion of the paving measure from Gov. Newsom may be viewed as a tragic case of too little and too late. Even when LA County’s public health officials got a step ahead of the state on Dec. 27 and indefinitely extended the area’s stay-at-home order, hospitals in the area have dropped to zero intensive care beds and beds have no more space and no staff.
“Hospitals are out of staff and have to use rooms that they don’t normally use,” said Dr. Ghlay on Tuesday about the situation in LA and the southern part of the state. “Pre-op beds are used to care for Covid patients,” he added, adding to the specter of the threat of “rationing of certain supplies and staff, and not every patient getting the attention we normally hope for” surge
“Usually you can stretch most rubber bands quite a lot while we stretch our hospitals pretty far,” said the state’s leading doctor. “Some hospitals have to fall back on crisis care.”
Unfortunately, with LA being the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis nationally, California reported 31,245 new cases and 242 new deaths today. That was 1.4% and 1% increases from Monday, bringing the total to 2.9 million confirmed cases and nearly 25,000 deaths in America’s most populous state. While these high metrics are shocking, the state has actually seen Covid cases decline somewhat over the past week.
With vaccines increasingly distributed in the Golden State, 245,955 tests were also conducted in California today. This new number is marked by long lines in most test centers and clinics and is 0.8% above the total value of the previous day. In a state of around 38 million people, 32.4 million tests are performed.
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