‘We Are Sinking’: Unions Representing L.A. Essential Workers Call For Month-Long Lockdown Syndicated Local – CBS Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) Hospitals in Los Angeles County were at a crisis point Thursday as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to surge, with patients at a Whittier emergency room forced to wait outside on gurneys for nearly an hour just to get into the hospital.
And the scene was the same across the Southland with ambulances lined up outside every major hospital Sky9 flew over as the region’s available intensive care unit capacity fell to zero.
“I worked at the County when the Rodney King riots happened,” Michael Rivera, a respiratory therapist at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center, said. “And this dwarfs that.”
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In a move that reflects the desperation of teachers, nurses, healthcare, grocery and hotel employees, their influential unions are calling for a strict month-long Los Angeles County shutdown in January to control the raging COVID-19 pandemic, save lives and ultimately allow for a quicker reopening of schools and the economy.
Evidence of mounting frustration and anxiety has also emerged in newly released surveys of teachers and parents as most campuses across L.A. County remain closed to in-person classes.
The union coalition called for what it described as a “circuit breaker” in a letter Wednesday night to the county Board of Supervisors and in an online petition. The letter demands stricter health orders, stronger enforcement and an infusion of aid from the state and federal government to keep workers and their employers afloat.
When will the general public get the COVID-19 vaccine?
Just how soon until you can get the COVID vaccine? Hal Eisner has some answers.
LOS ANGELES - Dr. James Keany from Providence Mission Viejo Hospital says 20 million COVID-19 vaccine doses are expected this month and another 30 million in January should begin to take care of those in our healthcare and high-risk communities.
As for everyone else, Keany says, “definitely by March and April, this should look like a flu vaccine where you can go into your local provider and get the vaccine.”
Local providers are expected to include a number of neighborhood pharmacies including CVS, which sent FOX 11 a statement saying, “We have an agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services to provide vaccines in our 10,000 CVS pharmacy locations which could be as soon as March 2021.”