California orders 5,000 body bags and 60 refrigerated trucks as coronavirus hospitalizations climb

California has ordered 5,000 more body bags and put dozens of mobile morgues on standby as the state faces its ‘most intense’ coronavirus surge yet.

Governor Gavin Newsom warned of the possibility of thousands of deaths in the coming weeks at a press conference on Tuesday as California reported more than 32,300 new COVID-19 cases and a seven-day average positivity rate of 10.6 percent – the highest since the start of the pandemic. 

The state’s seven-day average for daily deaths has risen almost three-fold in the last month to 163 this week. The 142 new fatalities reported Tuesday raised the death toll to 21,188, out of more than 1.6 million total cases. 

Newsom said he has activated California’s coroner mutual aid and mass fatality program to coordinate the response of coroners and morgues as the death rate continues to climb. 

The state recently distributed 5,000 additional body bags to Los Angeles, San Diego and Inyo counties, he said, while 60 53-foot refrigerated storage units were put on standby in counties and at hospitals where morgues could soon reach capacity. 

‘We’re going through perhaps the most intense and urgent moment since the beginning of this pandemic,’ Newsom said. ‘This is a deadly disease, and we need to be mindful of where we are. We are not at the finish line yet.’

The governor’s grim update came as the seven-day average for daily deaths around the US reached a new high of 2,472, with 2,918 reported in the preceding 24 hours, according to the COVID Tracking Project.  

More than 17,000 Americans died of COVID-19 last week alone, marking the deadliest week since the pandemic began and a 10 percent increase in deaths compared to the previous seven days.  

New Mexico and Colorado have also begun deploying refrigerated trucks to hard-hit counties in recent days – a sight which harkens back to the country’s original deadly peak in April.  

Nearly 113,000 people nationwide are currently hospitalized with the virus – the highest number at any point during the pandemic. The seven-day average for hospitalizations also broke a record with 109,031 after nine consecutive days of increases.  

Offering a glimmer of hope amid the harrowing latest tallies is the roll out America’s first COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer, which began arriving at hundreds of locations around the country on Monday, just three days after receiving emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration.  

But experts say the vaccine alone won’t be able to bring the pandemic to its knees as they plead with the public to be cautious over Christmas and New Years. 

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has projected that COVID-19 deaths – which surpassed a grim milestone of 300,000 just hours after the first vaccines were administered Monday, could exceed 500,000 by April 1 if current behaviors remain in place.

States in the West have experienced the worse of the country’s latest surge in infections, accounting for 738 cases per million people (or 31 percent of total infections), according COVID Tracking Project data over the weekend. The Midwest had 722 cases per million yesterday, while the Northeast had 628 and the South had 559 per capita.

The West’s lead has been driven by California – the nation’s most populous state – where the positivity rate has jumped more than four percent over the past two weeks. 

Even more troubling is the Golden State’s hospitalization rate, which has risen by 68 percent since December 1, Newsom said Tuesday. 

Intensive care unit admissions increased by 54 percent during that period, bringing available ICU capacity to 5.7 percent. 

Two out of five California regions – San Joaquin Valley and Southern California – currently have less than two percent of ICU beds available. Newsom said surge staffing and management will go into effect when a region hits zero percent.  

San Joaquin Valley, Southern California and Greater Sacramento – which together account for 77 percent of the state’s population, were placed under a stay-at-home order after their ICU availability dropped below 15 percent, triggering the closures of many nonessential businesses and limiting resident activity for at least three weeks. 

The Bay Area voluntarily placed itself under the same order despite not meeting the threshold. 

Los Angeles County imposed even harsher restrictions than those set by the state earlier this month amid a more than 300 percent surge in average daily hospitalizations. 

As of Monday nearly half of the county’s ICU beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients as officials warned it could be more than half by the weekend.  

‘Our reality is frightening at the moment,’ Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said. 

In more positive news, Newsom on Tuesday said the first  33,150 doses of Pfizer’s vaccine had already arrived in California and more are on the way this week. He said if the Moderna vaccine gets the green-light from the FDA, the state expects to receive 2.1 million doses of both options by the end of the month.  

As cases and hospitalizations surge in the West, the Midwest has continued to see declines in rates per capita for both categories, despite still leading for the latter. 

The Midwest also has the most deaths per capita over a seven-day average, driven by spikes in North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa.  

South Dakota’s infections declined 17 percent last week compared to the previous seven days and Iowa’s cases were down 25 percent. North Dakota still saw an increase of 13 percent but that has slowed considerably from previous weeks. 

Deaths are a lagging indicator and can potentially surge weeks after infections.   

COVID-19 cases are still increasing nationally with infections last week totaling a record 1.6 million, which is up 15 percent compared to the previous week. 

Rhode Island, Tennessee and Ohio are currently seeing the most infections per 100,000, according to CDC data.   

The devastating toll is only expected to grow in coming weeks, fueled by holiday travel and family gatherings. 

Hundreds more hospitals geared up to vaccinate their workers on Tuesday as federal regulators issued a positive review of a second COVID-19 vaccine needed to boost the nation’s largest vaccination campaign. 

The FDA said its preliminary analysis confirmed the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health, bringing it to the cusp of authorization. A panel of outside experts will offer their recommendation on Thursday, with a final FDA decision expected soon thereafter.  

The positive news comes as hospitals ramped up vaccinations with the shot developed by Pfizer. The first vaccine deliveries provided a measure of encouragement to exhausted doctors, nurses and hospital staffers around the country.

Dr Anthony Fauci called the rollout of the vaccine this week a ‘bittersweet moment’ given the rising daily numbers of deaths, cases and hospitalizations. 

‘We are still in a terrible situation – the deaths, hospitalizations, the number of cases,’ he told ABC’s Good Morning America.

‘We’re really starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We have to get people vaccinated as quickly as we can. We have to adhere to public health measures in order to blunt the acceleration of the numbers we’re seeing every day.’ 

Addressing the skepticism surrounding the vaccine, Fauci said the speed in which the vaccine was created was not ‘at the sacrifice of safety’. 

‘People, understandably, are skeptical about the speed, but we have to keep emphasizing speed means the science was extraordinary that got us here,’ he said.   

The CDC is planning to encourage Americans to wear a sticker saying they got vaccinated in an effort to encourage people to get the shots. 

The agency has already designed a sticker that reads: ‘I got my COVID-19 vaccine!’ 

The intensive care nurse in New York City who was the first to receive the vaccine yesterday immediately put on a sticker that read: ‘Crushing COVID-19, got my vaccine’.  

That nurse, Sandra Lindsay, got vaccinated at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens yesterday during a livestream with New York Gov Andrew Cuomo. 

Vaccinations continued to roll out throughout the morning with healthcare workers from Ohio to Louisiana rolling up their sleeves to get the shot after shipments of the frozen vaccine vials began to arrive at hospitals across the country.  

Healthcare workers are among the first to receive the vaccine. General Gustave Perna, who is in charge of the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed, said vaccinations will start in nursing homes this week. 

In New York City, Lindsay said she felt relief after becoming the first to be given the shot. 

‘It didn’t feel any different from taking any other vaccine,’ Lindsay said. ‘I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history. I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe.’ 

With a countdown of ‘3-2-1,’ workers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center gave the first injections to applause. 

In New Orleans, Steven Lee, an intensive care unit pharmacist at Ochsner Medical Center, summed up the moment as he got his own vaccination: ‘We can finally prevent the disease as opposed to treating it.’

Other hospitals around the country, from Rhode Island to Texas, unloaded precious frozen vials of vaccine – with staggered deliveries set to continue throughout the day and into today. 

‘This is the light at the end of the tunnel. But it’s a long tunnel,’ New York Gov Andrew Cuomo said. 

‘New York state did what we believe is the first vaccination in the United States. 

‘We have 170,000 dozes from Pfizer, 346,000 from Moderna. We have 90 distribution sites. Today we’re in the process of administering 10,000 vaccines. New York came out of the blocks very quickly and very aggressively. The vaccine only works if we take it.’

The first 2.9 million doses began to be shipped to distribution centers around the country on Sunday from Pfizer’s manufacturing plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan. 

The pharmaceutical giant said the first shipments will deliver millions of doses to 64 states, US territories and major cities, as well as five federal agencies.  

Moderna vaccine gets initial nod from panel of FDA scientists who say it protects against COVID-19 raising hopes a second US jab will get approved THIS WEEK as hospitals scramble to rollout Pfizer’s shot  

Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine has a good review from the FDA so far, according to documents published by agency scientists on Tuesday, bringing the U.S. a step closer to having enough doses of various shots to protect the most vulnerable Americans.

The vaccine could get emergency approval by the end of this week.

Approval of Moderna’s shot would bring a much-needed second supply of vaccines as the U.S. rolls out the limited and delicate supply of Pfizer’s shot. 

The massive undertaking began over the weekend with the first vaccinations doled out Monday. But only 2.9 million doses were set to go out with Pfizer’s initial shipment.

Operation Wap Speed aims to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of this month – but that goal won’t be possible without the immediate approval of Moderna’s shot.

Hundreds more U.S. hospitals are set to begin vaccinating their workers Tuesday as federal regulators issued a positive review of a second COVID-19 vaccine shot needed to boost the nation’s largest vaccination campaign.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in documents posted online that its initial review confirmed the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), bringing the shot to the cusp of U.S. authorization.

A panel of outside experts will offer their recommendation Thursday, with a final FDA decision expected soon thereafter.

The positive news comes as hospitals across the U.S. begin ramping up vaccinations with the shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech’s, which the FDA cleared last week. 

Packed in dry ice to stay at ultra-frozen temperatures, shipments of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine are set to arrive at 400 additional hospitals and other distribution sites on Tuesday, one day after the nation’s death toll surpassed a staggering 300,000.

The first three million shots are being strictly rationed to front-line health workers and elder-care patients, with hundreds of millions more shots needed over the coming months to protect most Americans.

A second vaccine can’t come soon enough as the country’s daily death count continues to top 2,400 amid over 210,000 new daily cases. The first vaccine deliveries have provided a measure of encouragement to exhausted doctors, nurses and hospital staffers around the country.

In Florida, government officials expect to have 100,000 doses of the vaccine by Tuesday at five hospitals across the state.

Vaccinations were also expected to kick off Tuesday in New Jersey, which is dividing some 76,000 doses among health workers and nursing home residents. 

The federal government is coordinating the massive delivery operation by private shipping and distribution companies based on locations chosen by state governors.  

Following another initial set of deliveries Wednesday, officials with the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed in Washington said they will begin moving 580 more shipments through the weekend.

‘We’re starting our drumbeat of continuous execution of vaccine as it is available,’ Army Gen. Gustave Perna, chief operating officer for Warp Speed, told reporters Monday. ‘We package and we deliver. It is a constant flow of available vaccine.’

Shots for nursing home residents won’t begin in most states until next Monday, when some 1,100 facilities are set to begin vaccinations.

Perna and other U.S. officials reiterated their projection that 20 million Americans will be able to get their first shots by the end of December, and 30 million more in January.

That projection assumes swift authorization of the Moderna vaccine up for review this week.