LA's COVID numbers are almost unfathomable. more than 700 people are being newly admitted to the hospital EACH DAY because they are too sick with COVID to be at home. this is why we hear sirens so often in LA now, this is why hospitals are being stretched so thin

hospitals just can't keep up. they're discharging between 500 and 700 COVID patients each day, but getting more admissions than that. I'd guess they'd be getting even more admissions if hospitals weren't so crowded already

two months ago, about 250 COVID patients were being admitted to LA County hospitals each day. one month ago, 450. given where our case numbers suggest we're headed, I'm worried about what we'll see one month from now

the 700+ admissions is a slightly slowed pace that we're seeing as we leave the worst of the Thanksgiving surge. earlier this month, there was a single day when nearly 1,000 people were newly admitted to LA County hospitals with COVID

but if we enter into a post-Christmas surge while already admitting 700 COVID patients a day from the tail end of the Thanksgiving surge, we're going to be in really, really bad shape. and it seems like that's where things are going

on New Year's Eve, there were only 23 staffed ICU beds left in LA County. what happens when we're admitting 1,500 COVID patients every day?

if the hospitalization admissions we're seeing now are from people who tested positive two weeks ago, they correspond with when we were logging about 13k new cases a day

but we're currently logging around 14k, in what is likely a combo of the continuing effects of Thanksgiving and perhaps the beginning of the Christmas surge. but that's only the beginning! we're *starting off* our next surge at this dangerously high level