In an extraordinary plea to their patients, three of California’s top health care providers Tuesday asked residents to resist the temptation to hold in-home family Christmas events this week. The hospitals predicted those events will trigger yet another patient surge on top of an existing wave of new COVID-19 infections.
Sutter Health, Kaiser Permanente, and Dignity Health, operators of major hospitals across California, held a joint call with reporters so they could plead with residents to “take stringent, common-sense precautions” in the coming days. They warned Californians that intensive care units and emergency rooms already are jammed with record numbers of patients and can’t handle much more.
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They’re calling it a “Don’t Share Your Air” campaign for the Christmas and New Year’s period. State officials said the current record numbers of hospital patients stems in good part from family gatherings during Thanksgiving, in defiance of state mandates not to hold get-togethers in family homes
