California could see 100,000 hospitalizations within a month

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California has recorded a half-million coronavirus cases in the last two weeks, overwhelming emergency rooms in urban centers and rural areas including along the Mexican border where a small hospital system warns it is fast running out of patient beds.

The state could be facing a once-unthinkable caseload of nearly 100,000 hospitalizations within a month, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday.

Conditions at El Centro Regional Medical Center in the southeast corner of the state are desperate, even worse than during a summer surge that caught the attention of the governor, hospital officials said.

“We don’t have space for anybody. We’ve been holding patients for days because we can’t get them transferred, can’t get beds for them," said Lenz, an emergency room physician at the medical center in Imperial County, home to 180,000 people.

Of the 175 patients at the hospital on Monday, 131 had COVID-19. The facility licensed for 161 beds has erected a 50-bed tent in its parking lot and was converting three operating rooms to virus care.

Newsom, himself quarantined for the second time in two months, said a state projection model shows previously unfathomable hospitalization numbers and he’s likely to extend his stay-at-home order for much of the state next week.

Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s secretary of Health and Human Services, said it’s feared entire areas of the state may run out of room even in their makeshift “surge” capacity units “by the end of the month and early in January.” In response, the state is updating its planning guide for how hospitals would ration care if everyone can’t get the treatment they need, he said.

“Our goal is to make sure those plans are in place, but work hard to make sure no one has to put them...