California extended its strict stay-at-home orders Tuesday in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions, where intensive care units are running out of beds. The move comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom warned residents to brace for the effect of a “surge on top of a surge” of coronavirus cases from holiday travel.
The state's top health official, Dr. Mark Ghaly, said that the two regions continue to have what is considered to be no ICU capacity.
The move means continued prohibitions of dining in restaurants as well as the closure of an array of businesses like hair and nail salons, among other restrictions.
Ghaly said the extension of the order for both regions could be shorter than three weeks; the timing will depend on regional factors, including ICU capacity, seven-day average case rate, transmission rate and ICU admission rate, which are evaluated on a daily basis.
Two other regions in the state, greater Sacramento and the Bay Area, have also been placed under the order, which is triggered when an area's ICU capacity falls below 15%.
The earliest the Bay Area can break free of the order is Jan. 8, but that will depend on the region's ability to keep ICU capacity above 15%. Current availability is just 10.4%. Greater Sacramento is eligible on Jan. 1, and right now it is just above the 15% threshold.
Newsom said Monday that even with hospital admissions plateauing in some places, the state was destined to move into a “new phase” that it’s been preparing for as it sets up hospital beds in arenas, schools and tents, though it is struggling to staff them.
California reported more than 31,000 new cases Tuesday and 242 deaths, but the numbers are likely to climb this week as labs and counties catch up their reporting from the holiday week.
State officials also notified hospitals that the situation is so dire they should prepare for the possibility that they will have to resort to “crisis care” guidelines established earlier in the pandemic, which allow for rationing treatment.
The surge of infections is due in large part to Thanksgiving travel and celebrations, which happened despite warnings from health officials not to gather because the nation’s most populated state was already seeing explosive growth in cases.
It’s created the greatest challenge for California’s health system since the pandemic began, with case counts, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 regularly breaking records.
Models used for planning show hospitalizations more than doubling in the next month from about 20,000 to more than 50,000.
The state has several makeshift hospitals that are taking patients, but more health care workers are needed to staff them, the Democratic governor said. It has deployed more than 1,000 people to 116 hospitals and other facilities through a volunteer corps or the National Guard. On the upside, Newsom said California finally expects to receive more of the traveling health care workers it had requested in anticipation of the shortage.
The Department of Public Health is sending an emergency medical team to Los Angeles to help better distribute patients among hospitals. Some hospitals are well above capacity and others are below, Newsom said.
Over the weekend, most Los Angeles County hospitals reached a crisis point where they had to divert ambulances because they didn’t have beds available. Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the county's public health director, said the “situation may only get worse as we begin 2021."
Los Angeles County, which accounts for a quarter of California’s nearly 40 million residents, has about 40% of the state’s 24,000 deaths. The county is approaching a milestone of 10,000 deaths. Anyone who has traveled out of Los Angeles County is required to quarantine for 10 days when they return, the health department announced in a news release Monday.
Although there are indications more people are heeding stay-at-home orders that apply to all of the state but the northernmost rural counties, there was a bump in air travel in Los Angeles similar to Thanksgiving, with a high of 43,000 passengers on Dec. 23 — the highest figure since the start of the pandemic, LAX spokesman Heath Montgomery said.
—Brian Melley, Associated Press and Cecilia Lei, KQED