California orders thousands of body bags as it struggles to deal with mounting Covid death toll

'This is a deadly disease, a deadly pandemic, and we're in the middle of it right now,' says governor Gavin Newsom

California has purchased thousands of body bags, as it struggles to cope with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday, governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state is distributing 5,000 body bags and 60 refrigerated trailers, for use as makeshift morgues, to its hardest-hit areas in Los Angeles and San Diego.

Officials in Orange County have also said that they will send large mobile field hospitals to four facilities in the area, to help deal with the high number of Covid-19 cases, according to The Guardian.

The orders were made as California announced that it currently has double the amount of people hospitalised from Covid-19 than at its original peak in the summer.

The Covid-19 hospitalisation figure has also risen dramatically over the last two weeks, as the amount of people hospitalised in the state from coronavirus has increased from 8,500 on 1 December to 14,200 on Monday.

The state is currently recording an average of 163 coronavirus deaths and around 32,000 new Covid-19 cases every day, as hospitals are struggling to find room to house patients.

The average capacity for intensive care units (ICU) in hospitals across the state is currently at 5.7 per cent, with the lowest figures recorded in Southern California.

A majority of the state has recently gone back into California’s most restrictive lockdown, which is triggered when a region’s ICU capacity falls below 15 per cent.

Under the stay-at-home order, all non-essential travel is banned and restaurants are unable to open for both indoor and outdoor dining.

In order to deal with the latest spike in cases, California has brought in 507 extra hospital staff members, but is looking for a total of 3,000, as cases are expected to rise amid the holiday period, according to The Guardian.

Dr Mark Ghaly, California’s secretary of Health and Human Services, said earlier this week: “Two weeks from now we are concerned about what our ability to provide the same level of high quality care will be.”

While Carmela Coyle, the president and CEO of the California Hospital Association, said: “Hospitals are in a very challenged situation right now,” and added: “That will only get worse, and potentially far worse in the next 30 days or so.”

Speaking on Tuesday, Mr Newsom asked California residents to continue taking precautions, and confirmed that the state is “in the middle of the most acute peak.”

“I want to remind folks: It's not the flu. This is not something to trifle with,” the governor continued. “This is a deadly disease, a deadly pandemic, and we're in the middle of it right now,” he added.

Although the first coronavirus vaccines were administered in California earlier this week, a large majority of the state’s population is not expected to be vaccinated until early Spring in 2021.

Speaking about coronavirus vaccines on Tuesday, Mr Newsom said: “There is light at the end of the tunnel, but we're still in the tunnel.”

He added: “And that means we're going through perhaps the most intense and urgent moment since the beginning of this pandemic.”

Since the start of the pandemic, California has recorded more than 1.66 million coronavirus cases and at least 21,483 deaths.

According to Johns Hopkins University, there are now more than 16.7 million people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in the US. The death toll has reached 303,867.