State Not Ready for a Flu Crisis
Los Angeles County and the rest of California have nowhere near the capacity to treat the hundreds of thousands of people who might need medical care should a pandemic flu strike, according to health officials and experts across the state.
Officials are only beginning to work out how they would find the extra hospital beds, health workers and equipment needed in such a crisis. County and state authorities could not say, for instance, how many ventilators might be on hand to keep severely ill people breathing.
"No one, and I repeat no one, is prepared for a pandemic that starts tomorrow," said Dr. Howard Backer, an official with the California Department of Health Services.
Three flu pandemics occurred in the 20th century, in 1918, 1957 and 1968. Another could come any time, experts say. No one knows when -- or if -- the avian flu virus that has killed millions of birds, mostly in Asia, and more than 100 people will ever mutate into a strain that would spread easily among humans.
But U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt has been prodding state and county health agencies to make immediate preparations. He embarked on a 50-state tour, visiting California last month, to urge local authorities to dust off "ethereal plans" and turn them into "community action."
Doing so is proving to be much tougher than simply stockpiling anti-flu drugs.
At a recent statewide summit on pandemic flu preparedness, Dr. Mark Horton, the state health officer, said "surge capacity," or the ability of hospitals to handle huge waves of patients, is "perhaps going to be our single greatest challenge in addressing the pandemic."
"We don't have enough hospital beds to take care of patients in a regular, ordinary flu season," said Dr. Michael Sexton, president of the California Medical Assn.
Dr. Brian Johnston, an emergency room physician in Los Angeles, said some ERs in the county are so jammed now that ambulances routinely are diverted to neighboring facilities.
"The famous line from emergency medical services is, we have trouble handling a Friday night," Johnston said. "Handling a large pandemic, by most estimates, is out of the question."
The county and state are hardly alone in grappling with the threat, and experts said it is hard to compare their progress with other parts of the country. But they are not among the recognized leaders in the area, such as New York City, which has plans for where and how mass vaccinations might be administered, and Seattle, which has identified indoor ice rinks that might serve as morgues.
