Over-acting in CA –
Doctors and nurses in California released a harrowing video begging people not to gather for the holidays, saying it will 'cripple our hospital system'
As California struggles to deal with a spike in case numbers and an alarming number of COVID-19 deaths, frontline workers in the state are begging people to stay home and not gather for the holidays.
Doctors and nurses from three California health systems - Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health, and Dignity Health - made the plea in a video posted on YouTube on Wednesday.
In the clip, several workers warned that choosing to celebrate the Christmas and New Year holidays indoors could overwhelm the state's healthcare system, and shared the devastating impact that the surge in cases was having on their mental health.
The video also included footage of patients lying on stretchers outside crowded hospitals.
This surge is beyond what anyone could have imagined," Dr. Pravin Acharya, an emergency physician, said in the video. "If people continue to gather for the upcoming holiday, we are going to cripple our hospital system."
The hospital system Acharya works for - Kaiser Permanente - said on Tuesday that 100% of their ICU beds were being used. They are now preparing to double up rooms in their 36 hospitals to meet the 220% increase in COVID-19 patients in the last month alone.
An intensive-care specialist, Dr. Vanessa Walker, also said in the video: "If we continue to gather indoors at the rate that we are, many more of us will not see the holiday next year."
California has averaged 252 daily coronavirus deaths over the last week, an increase of 73% from two weeks prior to that, according to a tracker from the Los Angeles Times.
Last week, the state reported its highest daily death toll of the entire pandemic - 398 deaths in the space of 24 hours, The New York times reported.
The US remains the worst-hit country in the COVID-19 pandemic, having recorded nearly 18.5 million cases and more than 326,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/doctors-nurses-california-released-harrowing-114204509.html