Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous and Dr. Jennifer Ellice, Los Angeles ER Doctor, discuss the latest COVID-19 developments as U.S. cases soar.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: The post holiday surge of the coronavirus has thrust the US into its darkest days of the pandemic with cases rising in nearly every state, including California where COVID-19 deaths are setting records almost daily. And hospitals are being pushed to the brink. Joining me now is Dr. Jennifer Ellice. She's an emergency room doctor in Los Angeles. Dr. Ellice, good to see you again. I understand that your hospital has the highest percentage of COVID patients in LA County. Tell us what conditions are like right now for you there.

JENNIFER ELLICE: Thank you, Alexis. Conditions are terrible right now. And we're just seeing the end of the Thanksgiving surge. Our hospital is overflowing with COVID patients. The ICUs are full. Patients are stacked in the waiting room, sometimes waiting as much as nine hours to be seen. Our emergency rooms are overflowing. Some of our doctors and nurses are being dispatched to waiting rooms to see patients. We've had a few horrible shifts in the last couple of weeks. We ran out of oxygen canisters, we've run out of certain sedation medications that we use to put people in comas to tolerate ventilators, we've run out of pressor medications where we use for people who are in shock.

So things are very dire and I don't think it's overblown to compare it to wartime medicine at this point.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Oh my goodness. It's horrifying to hear that you're running out of these supplies that are critical to giving people care. Where do things stand right now? I would imagine that the hospital is in talks with the governor. But have you gotten what you need? Or are you still waiting for it?

JENNIFER ELLICE: The situation fluctuates day to day. Right now there's a little bit of a lull in the rising death rate. We have a little bit of time now. The thinking is that this is the end of the Thanksgiving surge. But to know that we are going into what is possibly a worse surge from the Christmas holidays with our hospitals already full and our EMTs already stretched thin is very disheartening.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Have you had to start rationing care, which again is another horrifying thought for someone in your position? But has your hospital begun to do that?

JENNIFER ELLICE: You know, we have crisis care management teams that are gearing up and ready to advise us when that becomes a reality. It's not an if but probably a when. At least that's the thinking right now. We have had shortages of certain oxygen delivery devices. We call them high flow delivery devices, BiPAPs. And so in the sense that we've had to have some very difficult conversations about who gets to have those delivery devices, and we've already had those conversations.

I had a recent shift where we had so many people who were requiring CPR and coding that we had to make the decision to call some of them that were not going to survive. And I think that true rationing is probably in the future. But we are already struggling under the weight of this. On December 27, several hospitals in the area around my hospital went on-- they closed due to internal disaster which means that they were on diversion for ambulances that were arriving. So the extra ambulances, they come to us.

And I mean, if this happens all over Los Angeles, this is going to be a crisis of unprecedented proportions.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: It sounds like it already is, Dr. Ellice. Have you seen any patients with the more contagious variant of the virus?

JENNIFER ELLICE: We haven't been doing the kind of genetic typing that would tell us what kind of virus that people have. But there definitely is an enormous rise in cases. And so the thinking among my colleagues and I is that this is already here and that the contagion, the level of contagion, is also exacerbated by the fact that it doesn't seem as though people heeded government warnings to refrain from gathering over the Christmas holidays.

And the other thing that's very difficult for us is that our staffing has often been a legitimate concern as many of us have fallen ill or are in quarantine because we've been exposed. One of my colleagues, an ER physician who dedicated his life to treating patients in the emergency room, he died last week from coronavirus in an ICU, in one of our hospitals in my system.

So this is something that's very near to us. And we are definitely struggling right now. But I think that people need to know that they can still help if they can try to wear masks and if they can stay home unless it's absolutely necessary.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah. I'm so sorry to hear the loss of your ER doctor. Talk to us a little bit about the vaccine rollout at your hospital. We know that across the country, the rollout has been going a lot slower than many had hoped. Have you been vaccinated? And what has the rollout been like at your hospital?

JENNIFER ELLICE: I have. I've been lucky enough to receive two doses of the vaccine. The rollout at my hospital went rather smoothly once they arrived. I think that there is going to be an enormous logistical challenge ahead of us. And I really hope that it's not compounded by a vaccine misinformation. Just for your viewers, I got both of my doses. And my worst side effect was a sore arm. So I think it's something that's very important for folks to understand that as many people as we can get vaccinated as possible is going to help us stop this.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: What would you say to those folks who are on the fence about getting the vaccine? And in fact, a number of front line workers throughout the country have refused to get the vaccine yet. Does that surprise you being a front line worker yourself?

JENNIFER ELLICE: It does surprise me. I had a conversation. There is an orderly at my hospital who he delivers us our scrubs every night at around 10:00 at night. And so I've seen him many of our shifts. And I'm worried about him. And he had a little conversation with me recently where he said-- he's African-American. And he explained to me, he said, my people have for a long time had a lot of vaccine skepticism. And rightly so. And he said, but watching you guys go through what you've gone through, I figured if it's good enough for you guys, it's good enough for me.

And that conversation really touched me because I know we're all on the same team together. And I hope and I pray that everybody can trust the science and can educate themselves in a way from reputable sources and realize that this is our greatest weapon against this pandemic.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Well, thank you, Dr. Ellice for setting the example and for all of the hard work that you and all of your colleagues are doing there in Los Angeles County. We wish you the best. Dr. Jennifer Ellice.

JENNIFER ELLICE: Thank you so much for having me.