California sees record 379 coronavirus deaths as ICU capacity plummets

The coronavirus toll in California reached another frightening milestone on Thursday, with health officials announcing a one-day record of 379 deaths and a two-day total of nearly 106,000 newly confirmed cases.

The most populous US state has recorded more than 1,000 deaths in the last five days. Its overall case total now tops 1.7m, a figure nearly equal to Spain’s and only surpassed by eight countries. The state’s overall death toll has reached 21,860.

Many of California’s hospitals are running out of capacity to treat the severest cases, and the situation is complicating care for non-Covid patients. ICU capacity in southern California hit 0% on Thursday.

“It’s pretty much all Covid,” said Arlene Brion, a respiratory therapist at Fountain Valley regional hospital in Orange county, where she is assigned six or seven patients rather than the usual one to three. “There’s probably two areas that are clean but we’re all thinking eventually it’s all going to be Covid.”

The Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, who is quarantining after his daughter was exposed, gave a stark briefing to city residents, warning that within days LA county may declare a systemwide crisis, with all hospitals out of usual space and staffing. The hospitals are planning by identifying areas such as parking lots and conference rooms that can be used for patient care.

California psychiatric hospital’s Covid-19 outbreak has sickened almost 700

Read more

He also reminded residents that the governor earlier announced the state had ordered 5,000 additional body bags and has dozens of refrigerated trucks ready to use as temporary morgues to handle bodies too numerous for existing morgues. “That frightens me, and it should frighten you,” Garcetti said.

On Friday, Dr Brad Spellberg, the chief medical officer at the Los Angeles county-University of Southern California medical center, said the LA region was “moving towards becoming the epicenter of the pandemic” and that he feared his hospital could soon be so overwhelmed, that it could be unable to accept patients facing life-threatening emergencies.

“We’re getting crushed. I’m not going to sugarcoat this,” said Spellberg, who teared up during the news conference.

California for months maintained a very low per capita number of infections while other states were slammed. The massive rise in infections began in October and is being blamed largely on people ignoring safety measures and socializing with others. More recently, health officials said they had seen cases stemming from gatherings during Halloween and Thanksgiving. They have pleaded with residents to avoid getting together with people from other households over Christmas and New Year’s.

Based on the science of transmission of Covid-19, the “devastation we are experiencing now” is due to infected people being in close or direct contact with another person or group long enough to infect them, said Dr Muntu Davis, the Los Angeles county health officer.

Officials fear the state may not be seeing its worst days yet. Models posted online by the California department of public health predict that California’s hospitals over the next four weeks could be overflowing with 75,000 patients, about five times the current level. An average of 400 people could die every day.

The hospitalization projection is based on cases continuing to increase at the current rate of infection without people taking additional precautions to prevent spreading the virus.

Amy Arlund, a nurse at the Covid-19 unit at the Kaiser Permanente Fresno medical center, said it took counseling for her to be able to show up for work every day, and she was frustrated that her community was again going through a surge of infections. “We’re treated like we’re expendable,” she said. “We’re supposed to be the most trusted profession in the United States, and if we are so well trusted, why aren’t people listening to us?”

Amid the surge, San Diego county suspended enforcement of Covid-19 restrictions on restaurants and live adult entertainment establishments. The move came after a judge extended his order protecting two strip clubs from a state shutdown order and surprisingly said the ruling applied more broadly to restaurants.

The San Diego superior court judge Joel Wohlfeil said the government presented “no evidence“ the establishments that had implemented safety requirements were contributing to the surge.

California has opened five alternative care facilities, including a former NBA arena in Sacramento and two state-run developmental centers, to try to ease the burden on hospitals. Another 1,555 beds were in what state officials are calling “warm status”, meaning they can be ramped up within days to receive patients. State officials also are continuing to talk with the defense department about using the staff from the USNS Mercy hospital ship, even if they don’t use the ship itself.

San Francisco on Thursday issued a 10-day travel quarantine for anyone traveling to the region from elsewhere because of the high number of cases in other parts of the state and country. The city is averaging a record high of 242 new cases a day, although the rate of increase has “slowed just a bit”, meaning there’s still time to turn the “dire situation” around, said the public health director, Dr Grant Colfax.