Before the coronavirus hit, tens of thousands of people across the state sought emergency help each day. But in the weeks since the virus began its spread throughout the U.S., those numbers have plummeted by a third to a half, according to physicians overseeing emergency departments in hospitals across Los Angeles County and elsewhere in California.
The steep decline comes amid drastic measures hospitals have put in place to prepare for what health officials fear could be a wave of patients infected by the coronavirus like the ones that have overwhelmed hospitals in New York City and elsewhere.
So far, the numbers of people sickened by the virus in California have been manageable. But now doctors and health officials are increasingly worried that steps taken to keep hospitals at the ready, along with a widespread public fear the virus is rife in emergency rooms, have left people who are in immediate need of lifesaving help unwilling to seek treatment.
“Where are the strokes and the heart attacks? Where are the diabetics having complications?” said Dr. Larry Stock, an emergency physician at Antelope Valley Hospital. “These cases didn’t just vaporize with the virus. I worry people are suffering at home because they’re afraid our emergency rooms are radioactive.”
Physicians and health officials are amending their urgent warnings about the virus to stress that emergency departments are not overrun and can treat people safely. The full effect of what Stock dubbed “corona collateral damage syndrome,” and another emergency physician called “a virus of fear,” has not yet been tallied as hospitals and state agencies begin to gather comprehensive figures.
But from interviews with more than a dozen physicians working in rural and urban hospitals around the state, a portrait emerges of how emergency care in California has been upended by the virus. They worry people are dying at home from conditions that could have been treated and others who survive will now suffer from serious, chronic conditions resulting from their failure to seek help. – READ MORE
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