L. Paramedics Told Not To Transport Some Patients With Low Chance Of Survival

The coronavirus disaster in Los Angeles County hospitals has change into so dangerous that ambulance providers have been advised to not switch sufferers with a low likelihood of survival to protect hospital beds.

Apu Gomes/AFP by way of Getty Images

disguise caption

toggle caption

Apu Gomes/AFP by way of Getty Images

The coronavirus disaster in Los Angeles County hospitals has change into so dangerous that ambulance providers have been advised to not switch sufferers with a low likelihood of survival to protect hospital beds.

Apu Gomes/AFP by way of Getty Images

Paramedics in Southern California are being advised to preserve oxygen and to not convey sufferers to the hospital who’ve little likelihood of survival, as Los Angeles County grapples with a brand new wave of COVID-19 sufferers that’s anticipated to worsen within the coming days.

The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency issued a directive Monday that ambulance crews ought to solely administer bottled oxygen to sufferers whose oxygen saturation ranges fall beneath 90%.

In a separate memo from the county’s EMS Agency, paramedic crews have been advised to not switch sufferers who expertise cardiac arrest until spontaneous circulation may be restored on the scene.

Both measures introduced Monday, which had been issued by the company’s medical director, Dr. Marianne Gausche-Hill, had been taken in an try and get forward of an anticipated surge to come back following the winter holidays.

Many hospitals within the area “have reached a point of crisis and are having to make very tough decisions about patient care,” Dr. Christina Ghaly, the LA County director of well being providers mentioned at a briefing Monday.

“The volume being seen in our hospitals still represents the cases that resulted from the Thanksgiving holiday,” she mentioned.

“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.”

Speaking to the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, Gausche-Hill mentioned personnel would proceed to do all the pieces potential to save lots of the lives of sufferers, each on the scene and within the hospital.

“We are not abandoning resuscitation,” she mentioned. “We are absolutely doing best practice resuscitation and that is do it in the field, do it right away.”

“[We] are emphasizing the fact that transporting these patients arrested leads to very poor outcomes. We knew that already and we just don’t want to impact our hospitals,” she added.

Meanwhile, the state is in search of methods to extend its provide of oxygen to be used in treating COVID-19 sufferers, Gov. Gavin Newsom mentioned, based on the Los Angeles Times.

“We’re just looking at the panoply of oxygen support … across the spectrum and looking how we can utilize more flexibility and broader distribution of these oxygen units all up and down the state, but particularly in these areas — San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles, the larger Southern California region — that are in particular need and are under particular stress,” Newsom mentioned.

Los Angeles County stays the worst-hit county within the U.S. for each confirmed COVID-19 circumstances and deaths from the illness. Johns Hopkins University listed greater than 818,000 confirmed coronavirus circumstances and greater than 10,700 deaths from issues from the virus in Los Angeles County by late Monday.

Last week, the brand new extremely contagious coronavirus pressure from the U.Ok. was found in Southern California. Experts have mentioned it spreads sooner than the frequent pressure.