December 18th local time, New York State and California reported a state of emergency in their respective medical systems.
At present, New York State has increased the number of local hospital beds in accordance with the regulations of the health department, while the capacity of California’s intensive care unit has dropped to an all-time low, and the first two days it has purchased more shroud bags, while requisitioning refrigerated trucks on standby as emergency morgues.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that due to the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, the New York state government has provided assistance to medical institutions across the state to increase their patient capacity.
Cuomo said that the New York State Department of Health requested a 25% increase in patient capacity and recommended that hospitals should cancel elective surgery in case of capacity problems.
As required by the Department of Health, parts of New York State have added about 31,000 beds. The New York Department of Health also mandated that if a hospital in an area is 85 percent of its maximum capacity, state officials should be notified three weeks before the threshold is projected to reach.
Cuomo said that if this threshold is reached, New York State will block the economy in the region. In addition, New York State reported a state-wide positive rate of 5.09% on the 18th, and the number of hospitalizations with COVID-19, as well as the number of patients infected with COVID-19 and patients on ventilators, both decreased.
At the same time, it is reported that the number of intensive care beds in parts of California is insufficient, the number of intensive care unit beds in Southern California is completely saturated, and the number of intensive care beds available in the San Joaquin Valley has been hovering at an all-time low of 0.7%.
According to the report of the California Department of Public Health, California had 379 COVID-19 deaths on the 17th, the highest number of single-day deaths. California has purchased 5,000 shroud bags, and 60 refrigerated trucks have been requisitioned for emergency coroners and morgues.
