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‘So much death’: LA hospital reels at center of Covid storm
LOS ANGELES, Jan 13, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – Deep within a South Los Angeles
hospital, a row of elderly Hispanic men lay hooked up to ventilators — their
bodies resting in induced comas — while nurses clad in spacesuit-style
respirators checked their patients’ bleeping monitors in the otherwise eerie
silence.
The intensive care unit in one of the city’s poorest districts is well-
accustomed to death, but with Los Angeles now at the heart of the United
States’s Covid-19 pandemic, medics say they have never seen anything on this
scale.
“It’s hard. We’re human, and we’re trying our best,” said nurse Vanessa
Arias. “But we’ve seen so much death during the past few weeks.”
Barely moments earlier, she had informed another tearful family that their
mother had just passed.
“We’re in the midst of the eye of the storm,” she said.
Martin Luther King Jr Community Hospital, sandwiched between the
neighborhoods of Watts and Compton, is stretched far beyond capacity by an
unrelenting influx of coronavirus patients.
When AFP visited this week, it had converted a chapel and former gift shop
into overflow and examination rooms, created new makeshift ICU beds in the
post-surgery ward, and built field hospital tents outside its front entrance.
The 131-bed hospital had 215 patients, the majority with Covid. National
Guard medics had just arrived to ease the strain on overwhelmed doctors and
nurses.
“If Los Angeles is the epicenter of the world, this community is the
epicenter of Covid in Los Angeles,” said hospital CEO Elaine Batchlor.
Surrounding neighborhoods are overwhelmingly Hispanic and Black — two
demographics hit hardest by the virus.
The US has had more coronavirus cases and deaths than any other country in
the world. On Thursday, it set a new record of nearly 4,000 Covid deaths in
one day, bringing the country’s overall total to more than 364,000.
The country’s confirmed number of infections was 21.5 million.
At the MLK hospital, many of the patients are essential workers, highly
exposed at jobs in grocery stores and public transport, and living in crowded
homes where isolating is near-impossible.
Even before Covid, the community suffered from epidemic levels of
preventable and chronic disease, including diabetes, obesity, heart disease
and sepsis.
“We’re seeing whole families, groups of them, getting sick at the same
time,” said Arias, who like many MLK staff is herself Hispanic and grew up
locally.
“I could have been one of these people… It’s very unfortunate to see
people that look like you die.”
– ‘Worst I’ve been to’ –
The infection numbers affecting Los Angeles since November have been
staggering, even after 10 long months of pandemic in the nation’s second
largest city.
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A record 8,000 county residents are currently hospitalized with Covid.
Around one in 12 have already been infected, and one in five of those tested
recently are positive. More than 11,000 have died.
“I was also in New York when it was really bad. But this has probably been
the worst I’ve been to,” said Taylor Reed, a 24-year-old traveling nurse, who
also worked in Washington, DC and Minnesota last year.
California was initially praised for its handling of the pandemic in the
spring, but skyrocketing cases have sent most of the state back under “stay-
at-home” orders.
Ambulance workers have been told to stop transporting some patients with
extremely low survival chances.
California hospitals were this week ordered to postpone non-urgent
surgeries and to accept Covid-19 patients from elsewhere in the hard-hit
state if they have space.
Still reeling from a spike caused by Thanksgiving gatherings that spread
infections, state public health chiefs expect the Christmas coronavirus
“surge upon a surge” to peak in the next two weeks.
– ‘Under this pressure’ –
According to Batchlor, MLK’s disadvantaged location gives it one key
strength.
Accustomed to operating a “very, very busy emergency department” in normal
times, the gleaming new facility’s staff are extremely well-practiced at
rapidly processing patients.
Most have now received at least one dose of the new Pfizer vaccine.
But Batchlor still fears for her dedicated employees, who are stretched
thinner than ever as more patients continue to arrive.
“When I talk to our doctors and nurses working in our intensive care unit,
they continue to assure me that they’re on top of it,” she said.
“But I’m worried about how long they’ve been in this situation and under
this pressure.”
For Arias, keeping each patient’s family members “in the loop” despite
near-daily deaths helps to “makes me always feel fulfilled.”
But shortly before AFP’s visit, she called the relatives of an elderly
Hispanic lady who was rapidly deteriorating.
“As soon as I thought she was going to expire, I called them to rush over
here,” said Arias, hopeful they might arrive in time to say goodbye.
“Unfortunately, they didn’t.”
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