Los Angeles Times L.A. to get temporary morgues as COVID-19 deaths mount

The darkest days of the coronavirus pandemic still lie ahead, the leader of a trade group representing California hospitals said Friday, with the peak of the current wave expected to swamp the state’s healthcare system starting in a week or so.

Even though hospitals across the state are already contending with record numbers of COVID-19 patients, “we do anticipate the worst of this is to hit in another week or 10 days, and may continue into the month of February,” said Carmela Coyle, president and chief executive of the California Hospital Assn.

“This has been unprecedented for our state, unprecedented for the nation, unprecedented for the world,” she said during a conference call. “But we find ourselves today, in terms of the numbers, at a point where we are standing on a beach and watching a tsunami approach.”

California is currently adding, on average, just under 40,000 new coronavirus cases every day — a rate that has leveled off recently but is still massive and carries equally large consequences.

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State officials have said that about 12% of people with diagnosed coronavirus infections will need to be hospitalized. If that calculation holds true, then the roughly 278,000 cases confirmed statewide since New Year’s Day will eventually end with roughly 33,000 Californians in hospitals in the coming weeks.

When it comes to COVID-19’s impact on the hospital system, “the story was written weeks before, and that is this latency between viral spread and infection and the need for acute care,” Coyle said.

“We had all hoped that we would begin to see some declination in these numbers,” she said. “That has not been the case.”

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Health officials have long pointed out that the pandemic’s progression is predictable, and inevitable. People become infected with the virus, and within roughly two weeks, some fall ill enough to require hospitalization. Shortly after that, some patients’ conditions will worsen to the point that they need intensive care, and a share of those will die.

The lagging nature of the disease’s progression means it takes weeks to fully assess the consequences of the actions of residents and businesses. It also takes weeks for renewed personal vigilance or newly imposed restrictions to begin showing results.

Health officials have said the current surge walloping California began around Nov. 1 but kicked into overdrive in early December — fueled by travel and gatherings over the Thanksgiving holiday.

There’s real concern that a similar pattern is about to strike the state in the aftermath of the winter holiday season.

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While hospital populations change regularly as new patients arrive and existing ones are discharged or die, California’s healthcare system is already stretched thin by the relentless surge, and there are fears it will be hard-pressed to handle more.

As of Thursday, the most recent day for which complete data are available, there were 21,855 coronavirus-positive patients hospitalized in California, with 4,812 in intensive care.

Though the number of patients is no longer rising at the rate that it was weeks ago, and has actually fluctuated a bit in recent days, it’s still risen 15% since Christmas. More COVID-19 patients are also requiring intensive care.