Contact Tracers Struggle to Keep Up As Coronavirus Cases Surge From Holiday Travel
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2020
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
Dr. Christina Ghaly, Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, says hospitals are being forced to treat COVID-19 patients in conference rooms and gift shops as beds fill up.
To help contain the spread, Brett Dahlberg reports that some health officials in Michigan are asking people to do their own contact tracing.
In New York City, WNYC's Fred Mogul found a contact tracer who is making home visits in an effort to alert people in at-risk categories.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The US is breaking the wrong kind of records. One in a thousand people has died of COVID-19 in |
| 0:06.8 | this country. And California just passed two million confirmed coronavirus cases. The first |
| 0:13.1 | state to do so. Los Angeles is in a terrible situation right now. More than 720,000 of those two |
| 0:21.1 | million cases are in Los Angeles County alone. Many hospitals are at a point of crisis. Christina |
| 0:27.2 | Galley heads L.A.'s Department of Health Services and she spoke with my colleague Elsa Chang. |
| 0:31.9 | There are 70 hospitals that operate emergency departments across the broad geography of Los |
| 0:37.5 | Angeles County. And many of those are really at a breaking point. They have way too many patients |
| 0:42.8 | coming in. They have patients stacked up in the emergency department waiting for beds upstairs. |
| 0:48.0 | And those beds they're waiting for are full. So the hospitals are getting creative. |
| 0:52.4 | There might be patients that are being put into conference areas or gift shop areas and really |
| 0:59.3 | making room for patients in very non-traditional places within the hospital. |
| 1:04.4 | It looks like this current surge reflects Thanksgiving week when more people travel than |
| 1:10.0 | anytime since the start of the pandemic. That is anytime until this past weekend. |
| 1:16.0 | On Sunday, even more people ignored the guidance to stay home. The TSA screened nearly 1.3 million |
| 1:23.8 | airline passengers. The highest number since March. My message to people is to stay home. |
| 1:29.9 | The best way to show that you care for your health care workers and that you appreciate the value |
| 1:34.3 | that hospitals bring to you is to stay home and follow those public health restrictions so that you |
| 1:39.6 | don't need to rely on them for care for yourself or your loved ones. |
| 1:42.5 | Consider this. More coronavirus surges are coming and it's becoming nearly impossible to trace these |
| 1:51.0 | growing outbreaks. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Tuesday, December 29th. |
| 2:00.3 | This message comes from NPR sponsor AT&T. There's a lot that's different about this school year. |
| 2:06.0 | But one thing that hasn't changed is AT&T's commitment to education. They're focused on keeping |
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