While births have picked up during the pandemic, Local Long Beach hospitals are cutting NICU rooms to make room for COVID-19 patients.
Between snoozing in Bible study, you likely remember that there was no room in the Inn for baby Jesus. Thus, the infant and his mother celebrated his birth in a manger. A similar scene is playing out in Long Beach area hospitals.
To make room for the swelling number of COVID-19 patients, Neonatal Intensive Care Units at Long Beach Memorial and Saint Mary's hospitals are soon to be relocated to smaller and inadequately equipped rooms.
City Officials say broadly that local hospitals are "overwhelmed" but it's time residents learn what's really happening inside our local hospitals
This comes on the heels of a Long Beach Post report that Long Beach paramedics are being ordered not to bring patients to local area hospitals if they cannot be revived in the field. Meanwhile, a quarter of health care workers refused the COVID-19 vaccine in Long Beach. Even members of Long Beach fire and police are declining the vaccine.
While most of local media focuses on conditions outside the hospitals such as funeral service demands, vaccination compliance and paramedic admission very little reporting has been done regarding actual conditions inside the hospital.
Speaking to The Memo under conditions of anonymity hospital insiders are revealing details about what's happening behind their walls.
Inside Long Beach Hospitals
Generally there are three to four doctors responsible for adult care in the ICU. Under normal circumstances this number of adult ICU doctors is sufficient to meet local demand for emergency services. However, these are not normal times.
In response to the volume of COVID-19 patients doctors with little adult ICU experience are being managed by the few ICU doctors available. What this means for COVID patients is that if four patients were to code at the same time there would not be enough experienced adult ICU doctors or nurses to treat patients at the most critical moment of their care.
It's not only COVID-19 patients that are feeling the brunt of limited hospital services. Mothers and their newborns are also feeling the squeeze. So much so that the NICU floor is being cut to make room for adult COVID patients. What this means for newborns and their moms is harrowing.
Relegated to makeshift rooms, infants and mothers requiring neonatal intensive care face a far greater risk of death. The challenge is that the life saving equipment needed for infants and mothers can't be housed or accessed in such close quarters. This is troubling news for black mothers in Long Beach who before COVID-19 faced infant death rates of over 7 deaths per 1,000 births. This figure is 6 times worse than infant mortality faced by white mothers.
City Officials Need to do more
The strongest line of defense against COVID 19 is telling residents the truth. We learned this first hand when national figures misled the public about the virus at its start. Afraid that the truth may cause them to lose political office, politicians often leave out details that could encourage the public to make better decisions.
While the Mayor often cites the number of vaccines administered throughout the city and congratulates city workers about how fast they're working this is no time for praise. The real help hospitals need is greater social distancing compliance such as mask wearing and fewer social gatherings.
Thus, instead of politically correct language like "our hospitals are at capacity" we would all be better served if our leaders spoke more plainly and painted an honest picture to help build public awareness and inspire compassion.
Because leaders fear 'looking bad' residents would never know details about how Long Beach ICU's are being managed or the impact being had on infants and mothers.
It's against this backdrop that Mayor Garcia will take the stage to speak to Long Beach residents during his annual state of the union address. Having already misled locals about the re-opening of Community Hospital and dodging questions about LBPD's super-speader event the Mayor has some credibility issues related to his response to COVID-19.
We can only hope that instead of playing it safe and telling us again this year that "the state of the City is strong" or that Long Beach is "booming" the Mayor will do what strong leaders do during dark times. They sit their family down, look them square in the eye and tell them the honest truth.