While millions of Americans are waiting for a lifesaving vaccine, COVID-19’s death total keeps climbing upwards with horrifying speed, according to NPR.
California’s telemetry nurses, who specialize in the electronic monitoring of critically ill patients, normally take care of four patients at once. But ever since the state relaxed California’s mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios in mid-December, Nerissa Black has had to keep track of six.
President Joe Biden has extended a national eviction moratorium through March, but California lawmakers are still pushing to extend statewide tenant protections.
The Golden State has become the first in the nation to record more than 3 million known coronavirus infections, according to a Monday tally by Johns Hopkins University.
FAIRFIELD-SUISUN, CALIFORNIA
Dr. Jeison Recinos checks on Jose Luis Andrade Moscoso, who is suffering from COVID-19 at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar, Calif., on Jan. 11, 2020. Supervising RN Mesfin Meshesha, left, cares for another COVID-19 patient in the same room. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
California hospitals teeter on edge of ‘last-resort’ guidelines for care
LOS ANGELES Covid.-19 is continuing to put immense strain on health care systems throughout California, pushing some hospitals perilously close to a tipping point where officials may have to decide which patients should receive scarce resources, and which shouldn’t.
This bleak outcome, referred to as crisis care, has yet to occur and is “a last-resort environment,” according to Carmela Coyle, president and chief executive of the California Hospital Association.