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Funeral directors are also being inundated, according to Bob Achermann, executive director of California Funeral Directors Association.
“I think everyone is just pedaling as fast as they can,” he said. “I don’t think anybody expected for it to get like this.”
An update from the city manager’s office Tuesday said specifically that the morgues at Los Alamitos Medical Center and College Hospital were “experiencing difficulty” and received extra refrigerated units.
As intensive care units edge dangerously close to capacity, the city has deployed its mobile hospitals to Long Beach Memorial and College Hospital to provide additional space, and “our wait time for ambulances at hospitals has increased significantly,” the city manager’s office said.
Orange County s Hospitals Brace For More Patients As ICUs Fill yahoo.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yahoo.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The county s ICU bed availability remains zero in the adjusted metric, but dropped from 10.2% Monday in the unadjusted category to 7.5%. The state created the adjusted metric to reflect the difference in beds available for COVID-19 patients and non-coronavirus patients.
Just because a county s adjusted ICU rate may be zero, it does not mean there are no beds available, Orange County CEO Frank Kim said. The difference in the rates reflects what is historically expected from non-coronavirus emergencies, he said.
County officials are encouraging anyone with a medical emergency to not refrain from dialing 911.
It was welcome news to receive a relatively lower number of coronavirus cases on Tuesday, but the hospitals continue to fill up, Kim said.