On the same day that California reported by far its highest number of deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said that L.A. had breached its own grim threshold. On Wednesday, the county crossed 10,000 lives lost to Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
Specifically, Los Angeles County recorded 274 deaths from the virus in the previous 24 hours for a total of 10,056.
The 14-day average number of daily deaths for the virus according to Ferrer was about 150. That’s “about equal to the number of deaths from all other causes, which is about 170,” said Ferrer.
What’s more, “The impact of this current surge is overwhelming our hospitals and and it is increasing deaths.” The percentage of Covid-infected patients who are now sent to the ICU had risen from 20% last week to 26% on Wednesday. So it’s not just the virus that’s proving fatal, but also the nightmare scenario of Angelenos dying because they cannot get the appropriate care from overwhelmed ICUs.
“Some patients are waiting in ambulances because there is no space,” said L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis before revealing that, “Our medical examiner is receiving overflow of bodies from hospitals that are unable to store them.”
Given the amount of traveling and intermingling that have likely happened over the holidays, said Ferrer, “we need to be prepared for an increase on top of this increase.”
What’s more, at the top of a conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom revealed that the new, reportedly more infectious strain of Covid-19 first identified in the U.K. had been found in CA, specifically Southern California.
Newsom said he was informed “just about an hour ago” that the new strain had been found in the state. While the variation is much more infectious, it does not appear to be more deadly on a case-by-case basis, according to experts. Fauci said he wasn’t surprised that there was a case “and likely more cases in California.”
That, on top of the overflows and deaths described by L.A. County health officials, paints a very dark picture of the coming weeks in L.A.
“Many mortuaries across the county are filling up and they’re having trouble trying to make space,” said Dr. Christina Ghaly, who oversees the four county-run hospitals. “This is causing a backup of bodies at a variety of facilities across the entire county.” Ghaly said the county was “working with those facilities to try and come up with alternatives for storing those bodies.”
Ghaly said the L.A. County morgue, which she oversees, had “386 open spaces at end of yesterday.” The issue, she said, was with “private hospitals who are experiencing issues with a backup of bodies due to mortuaries being over capacity.” The county medical examiner has taken charge of that capacity — or lack thereof.
L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said that, a couple weeks ago, Cedars-Sinai had two floors dedicated to Covid-19 patients. As of Wednesday, the hospital had eight floors occupied by virus patients.
In terms of patients waiting in ambulances for beds to open up Ghaly said, “There have been some unfortunate outcomes for patients who could not be offloaded to hospitals in a timely manner.” When asked for specifics, she did not provide them.
Also on Wednesday, the county reported 10,392 new cases. The lower number of daily new cases is probably due to the fact that testing centers were closed over Christmas, said Ferrer.
COVID-19 Daily Update:
December 30, 2020
New Cases: 10,392 (756,116 to date)
New Deaths: 274 (10,056 to date)
Current Hospitalizations: 7,415 pic.twitter.com/qJtwIIs9ZR— LA Public Health (@lapublichealth) December 30, 2020
“There is a lot of community spread, and that makes it easier for this virus to keep spreading,” Ferrer said earlier this week. “So we’re all going to have to do everything we know how to do to contain the virus.”
“Please, do not go outside of your household to celebrate New Years Eve. If we don’t, then the beginning of 2021 will be worse than the ending of 2020,” said Dr. Ghaly.