Hospitals around Los Angeles county are taking precautions due to the recent novel coronavirus appearing in the US, with 3,011 people infected and 54 deaths, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health website said.
“There’s quite a few precautions we’re taking,” Kerri Balayan, assistant clinical director at the Presbyterian Health Hospital in Whittier said in a phone call on March 20.
Kerri Balayan said precautions are taken in situations including hospital visitations and screenings in an effort to make the Presbyterian Health Hospital a healthier place for its patients.
“The biggest thing is visitors being allowed in the hospital; at first it was two visitors allowed but now it’s one per day,” Balayan said. “Second is that we are screening everyone, that includes visitors as well.”
Balayan also stated new precautions have been added if someone thinks they may have the virus as well.
“If someone comes into our hospital and staff is trying to figure out whether they have it or not, we wear protective equipment, that means masks, gowns and gloves, that kind of thing,” Balayan said.
California Gov. Gavin Newson met with LA county hospital leaders and other medical professionals to plan for the incoming influx of coronavirus patients on March 17.
Newson said hospitals may be overcrowded, patients who require less-intensive interventions may be moved to assisted living or long-term care facilities and those with the least medical needs would be moved to hotels and motels purchased by the state.
On March 29, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a tweet that the LA Convention Center will now become a federal medical station led by the US National Guard to help relieve local LA hospitals to prevent overcrowding.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has listed a wide range of ideas in order to keep the workers and patients healthy and safe during the current outbreak.
The CDC has stated the nation’s hospitals have been asked to follow certain protocols like delaying all elective ambulatory provider visits, reschedule elective and non-urgent admissions into healthcare facilities, delay inpatient and outpatient elective surgical and procedural areas and postpone routine dental and eye care visits.
