From News Nation:
“LA County
paramedics directed not to transport certain patients with low chance of
survival”
The agency that
oversees emergency medical services in Los Angeles County has issued new
directives for paramedics transporting patients in ambulances as the
coronavirus pandemic places increasing pressure on Southern California
hospitals’ ICU capacity. The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services
Agency issued multiple directives Monday, telling paramedics to stop
transporting patients if they have virtually no chance of surviving, including
those whose hearts and breathing have stopped and who couldn’t be resuscitated.
One directive
told paramedics to not transfer patients in cardiac arrest to the hospital
unless spontaneous circulation can be successfully performed in the field.
Meaning, if the patient does not respond within 10 minutes of on-scene
interventions, paramedics must determine them dead on the scene and not
transport them to the hospital. This applies to blunt traumatic and
nontraumatic cardiac arrest.
Another
directive ordered ambulance crews to conserve oxygen, effective immediately.
Ambulance crews will now only administer oxygen to patients whose oxygen
saturation levels are below 90%. Supplies have been strained because of the
pandemic. Some older hospitals in Southern California have oxygen systems that
can’t handle the demand, and the state is contracting with the Army Corps of
Engineers to upgrade the systems. Giant oxygen containers may also be placed in
hospital parking lots as back ups. County health officials have expressed worry
over a possible incoming surge from the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. The
additional Thanksgiving cases have swamped hospitals, forcing them to treat
patients in hallways, ambulances and even gift shops, and forced an oxygen
shortage. The California National Guard is contributing freezer trucks to help
store bodies as hospitals run out of space.
More than
22,000 were hospitalized across the state, setting another record, according to
the COVID Tracking Project. California’s Department of Public Health reported
that of those hospitalized, nearly 4,700 were in intensive care units. Most of
the state’s population remains under a broad stay-at-home order as ICU capacity
dwindles. In hard-hit Los Angeles County, the total COVID-19 death toll has
reached 10,850, and confirmed cases topped 818,000. The county reported more
than 7,700 people hospitalized, including 21% in ICUs. This comes as the state
is trying to execute the massive immunization campaign “with a sense of urgency
that is required of this moment and the urgency that people demand,” but so far
only about 1% of California’s 40 million residents have been vaccinated, Gov.
Gavin Newsom said. The 454,000 doses of vaccine that have been administered in
California represent just a third of the more than nearly 1.3 million received
in the state so far, according to the California Department of Public Health.
Across the
country, the pace of immunizations has gone slower than planned due to
logistical hurdles and differing approaches across states and counties. On
Monday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said nearly 4.6
million shots have been dispensed. While the state wants to make sure no one is
jumping ahead in the line, Newsom said he wants to give providers the
flexibility to distribute doses to people not on the priority list if doses are
at risk of going to waste. “We are working hard to make sure that 100% of what
we get, we get out as quickly as possible,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the
California Health and Human Services Agency, said. Overall, California has more
than 2.45 million confirmed coronavirus cases and almost 27,000 deaths,
according to data complied by Johns Hopkins University.
^ California
has failed its residents and that failure and directive to refuse treatment to
those that desperately need it will forever be a dark stain on the State and
the Country. ^
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