SoCal hospitals still short of oxygen
Samantha Masunaga
After almost two weeks in the hospital battling COVID-19, Gerardo Mercado was ready to go home. There was just one problem: He couldn’t get portable oxygen cylinders to aid his recovery there.
Southern California hospitals are struggling to get enough life-saving oxygen to patients as they weather the COVID-19 surge, revealing infrastructure problems at old buildings and a supplychain backlog with critical consequences.
“Our hospitals have never experienced this kind of strain on the oxygen supply chain,” said Adam Blackstone, vice president of external affairs and strategic communications with the Hospital Association of Southern California, which represents 180 hospitals.
COVID-19 hospitalization rates in L.A. County have come down from their alarming highs of two weeks ago, improving the oxygen pipeline to hospitals. But hospital administrators and medical suppliers say problems with refill and delivery of oxygen tanks are still hampering the medical response.
It’s partly a hospital infrastructure problem, as some aging and overworked pipes that funnel oxygen to patients have frosted, slowing down or even stopping oxygen transmission.
There’s also not enough concentrators, which extract oxygen from the air, and tanks to meet demand at hospitals or for patients to take home when they’re discharged. On the distribution side, the number of trucks available to deliver oxygen has been stretched thin.
To deal with the surge in demand, some companies are bringing in medical oxygen from other states
— sometimes as far as 1,000 miles away — or increasing production locally, said Rich Gottwald, president of the Compressed Gas Association trade group, which represents about 90% of the industrial and medical gas industry.
To help accommodate, California has temporarily loosened restrictions regulating the transport of oxygen, oxygen equipment and other COVID-19 supplies, including the limit on how many hours a truck driver can be on the road. State officials have also set up a task force to address the oxygen supply issue.