What is known
- Living orders at the state’s toughest home for the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California were due to expire Monday.
- ICU capacity projections in the Southern California and San Joaquin Valley regions have stood at 0% for days.
- The stay-at-home orders require ICU capacity forecast divisions to be above or equal to 15%.
Home stay orders are expected to expand in California’s toughest home in central and southern California as hospitals in these areas reach low intensive care unit capacity ahead of a rising case from after an expected vacation.
Home stay orders for San Joaquin Valley and Southern California are expected to expire Monday – they were executed three weeks ago – but Gov. Gavin Newsom has said they would not be allowed to disappear. State officials said Sunday afternoon that the orders were likely to be extended but did not make a definitive decision.
Newsom said Tuesday’s announcement appears to have extended the order following a review of available data Monday.
“It ‘s self – evident that this may be the case,” Newsom said of the ability to extend the order in the Southern California area, citing an ICU capacity of% 0.
It is a difficult situation, and the worst is expected to come in the few weeks after the Christmas and New Year travelers return home.
“We’ve been stretched longer than we’ve ever been stretched,” said Dr. Peter Chen, department director for emergency lung care at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
California hit 2 million confirmed coronavirus cases on Christmas Eve, becoming the first state to reach the milestone. For context, the first COVID-19 case in California was confirmed January 25. It took 292 days to get to 1 million infections on November 11th.
In Los Angeles County, the most populous county estimates in the country show that about 1 in 95 people are infected with the virus. Officials estimate that one person dies every 10 minutes from COVID-19 in the county.
The first COVID-19 case in California was confirmed January 25. It took 292 days to get to 1 million infections on November 11. u003cemu003eCalifornia hit 2 million confirmed coronavirus cases u003c / emu003eby Christmas.
Nationwide, officials on Sunday reported 2,122,806 confirmed cases and more than 24,000 deaths. Figures are from Saturday, the latest available data. Most of the state is under home stay orders.
“The thing is we don’t know what the peak is going to be,” Chen said.
“That’s definitely the scary part about it because we’ve already gotten over the number of patients coming in.”
The state’s total confirmed cases rose more than 50,000 – an increase of 2.4% – over the previous day, data show. Some of the cases feature two days of data from Los Angeles County, which had an internet service outage Friday and caused delays in reporting.
A further 237 deaths were reported to the state, a figure believed to be an understatement due to the LA County reporting delay.
The stay-at-home orders require ICU capacity forecast divisions to be above or equal to 15%.
“Most of the state is indeed seeing that growth go down by one major exception, which is Southern California,” Newsom said at a midday video conference.
Northern California has ICU capacity projections at 28.3%, and Southern California and San Joaquin Valley projections at 0%. Greater Sacramento area stands at 17.8% and Bay Area at 11.1%, state figures show.
In some counties in the San Joaquin Valley, state data show that there are no ICU beds left. In others, very few remain. The crisis is straining the state’s medical system far beyond its normal capacity, prompting hospitals to treat patients in tents, offices and audios.
California reported more than 20,600 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 Monday with 1,385 ICU beds available.
Jonathan Lloyd from NBCLA contributed to this report.