LA County is out of ICU beds and dangerously low on oxygen

As if things were worse than they already are, there are now so many patients in Southern California hospitals that patients have to wait as long as eight hours in ambulances before they can enter an emergency room, reports the Los Angeles Times. It has even become so bad that some health officials are urging people to avoid hospital Emergency Rooms and try not to call 911 for help unless it is absolutely necessary, “Her everything we worry about and talk about and warn people about since February is coming to fruition – we are at that stage now, “said the neurosurgeon of Santa Monica. Hospital officials have considered rationing care. There are fears that Los Angeles area hospitals are approaching the situation in New York City in April last year, where hospitals were overcrowded with critically ill COVID patients, NPR reports. org. “We don’t have ICU beds,” said Brad Spellberg, chief medical officer at LAC + USC Medical Center, one of the largest hospitals in the region. “We’re just always, 24 hours a day, scrambling to move patients around. The flood is just continuing.” When asked what the situation was like from the inside, Spellberg says it’s like a “battle cure,” a frantic race to save lives when there are not enough workers to deal with: “You have nurses who have assigned 20 patients when they ‘should only have five assigned to you. You have doctors who have not managed an air conditioner in 20 years suddenly rely on medical staff. to regulate air. ”

A French first aid worker from the Civile Defense Paris Seine is holding an oxygen mask over the mouth and nose of a male patient suspected of being infected with COVID-19 and lying in an ambulance

Lucas BARIOULET, AFP

Oxygen is essential in the treatment of COVID-19 patients who have started asthma because of their lungs with a virus. Doctors have learned a lot about the virus over the past nine months, and one important lesson is to try their best to keep patients off air conditioning. Using an ventilator a breathing tube must be placed down a patient’s throat. Doctors are now administering high-flow oxygen treatment to patients through a nasal cannula. While a non-COVID patient may receive six liters of oxygen per minute, COVID-19 patients need 60 to 80 liters per minute. Now, a similar situation has hit some hospitals in Los Angeles County. The life-saving gas has become desperate, and the stills are high, as LA County saw the largest ever COVID-19 fatalities in a single day: 140 on Christmas Eve. There have been times where hospitals have been running dangerously low on their oxygen stores before they received an additional supply, one source said, commenting on the state of the anonymous name. “Hospitals have implemented their promotion plans and are adapting staff and space to try and meet the needs of their community,” wrote Dr Sharon Balter, the county’s head of disease control and prevention, in the report. memo issued to district hospitals. “It is vital that we as a healthcare community look at every opportunity to help reduce the increase in hospitals and our 911 system, where possible. “There are very few hospital and ICU beds available, and emergency departments are stressed to capacity,” Balter wrote. According to Johns Hopkins University, Los Angeles County has registered 678,040 confirmed coronavirus cases and 9,305 deaths as of December 26, 2020.