LA County becomes 1st county to hit 1M COVID cases

Updated: Jan 17, 2021 / 04:00 PM CST

A nurse walks inside a temporary Emergency Room, built into a parking garage at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, California on January 3, 2021. – Approximately four weeks ago, the hospital had a very manageable census, and very small amounts of patients in the ICU, but since Thanksgiving it seems like the census has been doubling every 10 days and they’ve gotten to a point where 80% of the hospital is filled with patients with Covid-19, and 90% of the ICU is now filled with Covid-19. According to doctor Yadegar, it’s not just a matter of room, but it’s also the staffing to have nurses, as well as doctors to be able to take care of those patients. It’s very difficult to get critical care nurses and doctors. So, it’s hard to expand, even if we can expand with the number of beds in the rooms it’s impossible to expand in terms of nurses and doctors because there’s limited resources. The situation is very dire. The hospital systems are at a breaking point unless we were able to get this infection under control. It’s not sustainable. Unfortunately, the emergency room is having to close and not be able to take patients that are coming in with ambulances because we don’t have room for them, and at this point this is impacting not just what happens in the hospital but it affects everyone in the community. (Photo by Apu GOMES / AFP) (Photo by APU GOMES/AFP via Getty Images)

(NewsNation Now) — Los Angeles County hit more than one million confirmed coronavirus cases this weekend as California continues to be ravaged by the virus.

The nation’s most populous county exceeded one million Saturday according to data Johns Hopkins University, the highest total for any county nationwide. Cook County in Illinois reported more than 430,000 overall confirmed cases and Maricopa County in Arizona reported more than 410,000 confirmed cases.

Los Angeles County has reported more than 13,000 deaths with the county still under the state’s enforced hospital surge order.

This comes as the first case of the variant of COVID-19 initially detected in the United Kingdom was reported in the county Saturday.

“The presence of the U.K. variant in Los Angeles County is troubling, as our healthcare system is already severely strained with more than 7,500 people currently hospitalized,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of the county’s Department of Public Health.

Other cases of variant B.1.1.7 have been reported in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Connecticut, and Florida among others.

Earlier in the month, the Los Angeles County Emergency Services Agency issued directives, instructing paramedics to stop transporting patients if they have virtually no chance of surviving, including those whose hearts and breathing have stopped and who couldn’t be resuscitated.

Overall California had reported more than 2.95 million confirmed coronavirus cases with more than 21,000 people currently hospitalized across the state according to the COVID Tracking Project. The state Saturday reported 669 COVID-19 deaths, the second-highest daily death count.