Administrative worker Leslie Castillo, right, hands a COVID-19 testing kit to a man at a testing site in Los Angeles, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2020. Hospitals in central and Southern California are quickly running out of intensive care unit beds for coronavirus patients and state officials are poised to extend the strictest stay-at-home orders there as conditions worsen before the post-holiday surge hits. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
With 13,580 new cases logged on Sunday, Dec. 27, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported more than 40,000 new positive COVID-19 cases since Christmas Day. State officials, meanwhile, are expected to extend the strictest stay-home orders in Southern California on Monday as hospitals are quickly running out of intensive-care unit beds for coronavirus patients ahead of a presumed post-holiday surge.
L.A. County health officials reported 44 new COVID-related fatalities Sunday — bringing the total since Christmas to 180 and 9,482 overall — but added that the death toll is under-reported because of weekend and holiday reporting delays.
Overall, the county has reported 719,833 cases since the pandemic began.
Sunday’s hospitalization total climbed to 6,815 people — up from 6,770 on Saturday and 6,499 on Christmas Eve — with 20% of patients being treated in intensive-care units.
With the situation already dire, the worst is expected to come in the next few weeks after Christmas and New Year’s travelers return home. California hit 2 million confirmed coronavirus cases on Christmas Eve, becoming the first state to reach the grim milestone.
“It is likely that the Regional Stay at Home Order will extend for many regions in California,” officials said in a news release Sunday, but did not offer a definitive ruling or a new timetable. The order includes such measures as a ban on outdoor dining and limits on malls and other retail businesses, aimed at stemming the flow of infections.
The stay-home orders for Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley were set to expire Monday, Dec. 28 — they were first imposed three weeks ago, when the percentage of available intensive-care beds fell below 15% — but Gov. Gavin Newsom has signaled they would not be allowed to lapse.
The 11-county Southern California region remained at 0% ICU availability on Sunday. The state’s metric indicated that the San Joaquin Valley shared the same 0% rate as Southern California, while Northern California’s ICU capacity projections were at 28.3%, the Greater Sacramento region stood at 17.8% and the Bay Area hovered at 11.1%.
The figure, intended as a warning sign that ICU units are growing dangerously scarce, doesn’t necessarily mean there are absolutely no open ICU beds on a particular day. The state Department of Public Health index takes the actual percentage of remaining adult ICU beds each day and adjusts it to reflect the lopsided share of COVID-19 patients in intensive care compared to others who also need those beds for life-saving treatment and equipment, such as ventilators.
Nonetheless, experts agree that L.A. County’s ICU beds are alarmingly full and hospitals are scrambling to respond to the unrelenting demand. Health officials have reported that hospitals across the region are struggling to find room for patients and trained staff to care for them. County Health Services Director Dr. Christina Ghaly said last week that some ambulance crews have been waiting hours outside emergency rooms to offload patients due to lack of space. During the past week, many of the county’s 70 emergency-room-equipped hospitals were forced to divert ambulance traffic to other medical facilities at some point due to overcrowding, Ghaly said.
Health inspectors and authorities stepped up enforcement at restaurants and shopping malls over the post-Christmas weekend in an attempt to curb the surge and most hospitals have implemented surge plans they hammered out weeks ago in preparation for such a boom in new cases.
Statewide, officials on Sunday reported that California has had 2,122,806 confirmed cases and more than 24,000 deaths. The figures are from Saturday, the most recent data available. Most of the state is under stay-at-home orders.
In Los Angeles County, about 1 in 95 people are contagious with the virus, officials said.
“People mixing with others not in their household has driven the COVID-19 pandemic in L.A. County to the most dangerous levels that we have ever seen,” Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said in a statement Saturday.
“The overwhelmed hospitals are the saddest proof of this reality. To honor our health care workers and for the safety of your family and friends, please delay travel plans and gather only with members of our household. These actions will save lives,” she said.
The Sunday update did not include new numbers from the cities Long Beach and Pasadena, which maintain their own health departments. Long Beach did not post updated totals over the weekend; as of Thursday, the city had posted 29,197 cases and 349 deaths. Pasadena added 127 new cases to its total Sunday, for a total of 6,297; three new fatalities increased the city’s death toll to 154.
County officials discouraged residents from traveling for the holiday and Southern California Auto Club experts said that such trips would decrease by 37%. But that still left 5.4 million people expected to take a trip, most of them by car. More than 350,000 people planned to fly, a decrease of more than 50 percent from last year.
Health officials reminded travelers entering L.A. County that they are required to quarantine for at least 10 days in their homes or in the rooms of their lodgings — even if they feel well.
City News Service and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
