Just 1% of Californians immunized amid slow vaccine rollout
The crush of patients with the coronavirus is so severe in Los Angeles that they exceeded the normal capacity at one community hospitalBy BRIAN MELLEY Associated PressJanuary 6, 2021, 4:45 AM• 5 min readLOS ANGELES — The crush of patients with coronavirus is so severe in Los Angeles that on Tuesday they exceeded the normal capacity at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, which serves many Blacks and Latinos in America’s largest county.The hospital in the south part of the city, which has a capacity of 131 patients, was treating 215 patients, 135 of them with COVID-19, said Jeff Stout, the interim chief nursing and operating officer.MLK is emblematic of what is happening at hospitals in Los Angeles, where a surge of coronavirus cases has overwhelmed medical staff, created a shortage of oxygen and led to a directive to ambulance crews to stop transporting patients they can’t revive in the field.Stout said the hospital was finalizing its crisis standards of care, which are guidelines for rationing treatment when staff, medicine and equipment are in short supply.“We’re not there yet,” Stout said. “Every day, every hour we’re trying to avoid going into crisis care. The ultimate goal with crisis care is
