Intensive-care bed capacity at Southern California hospitals fell to 6.2% on Friday, Dec. 11, according to state officials, down from 7.7% the day prior.
The number has declined every day since Monday, Dec. 7, when 10.9% of adult ICU beds were available.
When state officials started reporting the data on Thursday, Dec. 3, Southern California’s capacity was 20.6%.
The Southern California region includes Imperial, Inyo, Los Angeles, Mono, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
The area has been under a regional stay-at-home order since Sunday because of its limited ICU availability. The order supersedes such orders earlier issued by counties.
The order is set to last through at least Dec. 27. At that point, state officials will assess the following four weeks of projected intensive-care bed availability on a twice weekly basis.
Whenever the region’s capacity is expected to be at least 15%, the order will be lifted, officials said.
While state officials haven’t disclosed why they chose 15% as the threshold for triggering the regional stay-at home order, they have made it clear why having enough ICU beds is crucial.
“We are certainly worried that with so many new patients with COVID being admitted to (the ICU) system, that important-but-fragile system, may be overwhelmed,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s Health and Human Services director, said in a Tuesday, Dec. 8, briefing.
If resources become too scarce, healthcare providers may be forced to make decisions about who receives care and who doesn’t, a triage scenario more familiar to the battlefield or disaster zones. People could die unnecessarily for lack of care. Morgues could become overrun — like what occurred in New York at the pandemic’s onset.
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Friday, as the region’s ICU capacity continued to drop, that coronavirus patients in need of treatment in the county’s ICUs is projected to reach more than 1,600 in the next two weeks if things don’t turn around. That’s concerning, she said, as there are roughly 2,100 ICU beds across the county — and folks with illnesses other than coronavirus need access to the beds, as well.
“The impact of these Thanksgiving surges of cases on top of already rising cases,” she said, “is creating extraordinary stress on our health care system.”
If things continue as they are, the number of patients who need ICU treatment in the coming weeks, Ferrer said, “could become catastrophic.”
"again" - Google News
December 12, 2020 at 05:34AM
https://ift.tt/3a3qj4b
Southern California ICU bed availability falls again, to 6.2% - LA Daily News
"again" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2YsuQr6
https://ift.tt/2KUD1V2
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Southern California ICU bed availability falls again, to 6.2% - LA Daily News"
Post a Comment