Paramedics in Southern California have been told not to transport patients to the hospital who are less likely to survive and to ration oxygen supplies as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
In a directive issued on Monday, Emergency Medical Services Agency Director Marianne Gausche-Hill instructed paramedics not to transfer adult patients “in blunt traumatic and nontraumatic out-of-hospital cardiac arrest” if successful resuscitation is not achieved in the field “due to the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on EMS and 9-1-1 Receiving Hospitals.”
A second directive ordered first responders to administer oxygen only “to patients with oxygen saturation below 90%” and to administer “the minimum amount of oxygen necessary to maintain oxygen saturation at or just above 90%.”
The news comes as coronavirus cases in California, as in most of the country, continue to surge, with health officials bracing for a compounded surge following holiday travel and a failure to adhere to social distancing guidelines. California is the only state in the country with more than 2 million reported COVID-19 cases. The state has the third-highest death toll of any state, at 27,000 lives lost, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The state’s rolling testing positivity average remains above 12%, according to the state’s coronavirus dashboard, slightly below the national average of 13.6%.
Los Angeles County Director of Health Services Christina Ghaly told reporters on Monday that many hospitals in the region “have reached a point of crisis and are having to make very tough decisions about patient care,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
Surges in hospitalizations and deaths related to COVID-19 typically lag behind case surges, and Ghaly said the volume of patients arriving in maxed-out hospitals in California “still represents the cases that resulted from the Thanksgiving holiday.”
“We do not believe that we are yet seeing the cases that stemmed from the Christmas holiday,” Ghaly added. “This, sadly, and the cases from the recent New Year’s holiday, is still before us, and hospitals across the region are doing everything they can to prepare.”
“For the near future, based on all the travel and intermingling witnessed over the holiday, L.A. County is likely to experience increases in cases associated with the winter holidays,” a spokesperson for the L.A. County Department of Public Health told the Washington Examiner. ” With the average number of new daily COVID-19 cases anticipated to once again reach 15,000, L.A. County could experience, two weeks from now, 8,500 people hospitalized each day, and a week or two later, daily deaths rising to 175.”
“We are likely to experience in January the worst conditions that we have faced the entire pandemic,” the spokesperson added. “Public Health urges everyone to take personal responsibility and do your part to stop the surge; the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths do not go down until the number of new cases decreases.”
As California continues to grapple with the surge in coronavirus cases, its vaccine administration program has fallen behind those of other states. Of the more than 1.8 million doses of the vaccine distributed to the state, only 451,702 doses have been administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 24% of the state’s vaccine supply.
