December 29th – American media reported that the current epidemic has overwhelmed California’s medical system, so that some hospitals now have to treat patients in gift shops and chapels; they even set up tents as waiting rooms and set up to the streets.
According to the US media Business Insider on the 28th, Dr. Elaine Batchlor, CEO of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles, said that if the hospital continues to increase in COVID-19 cases, wartime technology may have to be used.
As health professionals, Bartkad said employees may be forced to do something, but everyone is reluctant to think so.
According to the report, the hospital serving poor communities in southern Los Angeles has become overwhelmed by treating COVID-19 patients, accounting for 66% of COVID-19 patients in the hospital.
Dr. Oscar Casillas, the medical director of the emergency department of the hospital, said that the emergency department of the hospital usually comes to see 30 people a day, but 100 visits a day during the COVID-19 pandemic. The waiting room of the hospital is now set in an outer tent, said Casillas, “always on the street”.
Reports say similar situations are happening in hospitals throughout Los Angeles County, especially in South Los Angeles. Earlier this month, as the number of confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19 continued to surge, California launched the “Plan to Respond to Mass Deaths”, which aims to ease the burden on local institutions caused by the increase in deaths.
In Southern California, with a population of nearly 24 million, ICU beds are full, which means that patients will probably be placed elsewhere in the hospital.
Los Angeles County officials are now working to test samples to detect the new, more transmittable variant of the novel coronavirus originally discovered in the UK.
But many health experts, including the head of the Los Angeles County Public Health Bureau, Barbara Ferrer, say the reason for the spike in the number of confirmed cases in the area can be attributed to people’s disregarding social distancing and other protective measures during the holiday season.
