Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced at his daily briefing Friday the expansion of street medical teams to help the city’s homeless population amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“We have to get more screening, testing, and treatment to Angelenos who are most vulnerable to this virus,” said Mayor Garcetti. “We’re putting experts and resources in places where they can make an immediate difference and help save lives.”
Starting Monday, the city will surge deployment of medical teams to areas with high-density homeless encampments to conduct rapid result field tests for people showing coronavirus symptoms; expand health and wellness screenings, which they’ve already done about 1,000 of; provide guidance on physical distancing; provide transportation to shelters and hotels; and send extra nursing staff to Skid Row.
The Los Angeles Fire Department will also set up a pop-up clinic to conduct fast-result tests and provide transportation to quarantine locations when needed.
L.A. is also ramping up room for homeless and vulnerable individuals at reaction centers, with 850 beds currently at 95% capacity.
The city and L.A. County also have 24 hotels and motels secured with 2,400 rooms for “Tier 1” Angelenos — individuals over the age of 65 or with chronic medical conditions — who are not showing symptoms but are at the greatest risk of getting sick. They are in negotiation with two dozen more hotels to add thousands of additional rooms, the mayor said.
He also urged more hotel and motel owners to allocate rooms to the city and county for quarantine use, asking them to submit a price quote for a block purchase of rooms through an online portal, saying, “We need you.”
The mayor also announced a program to use trailers given by the state to house Tier 1 Angelenos. The first 10 will be located on the Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills Medical Center campus, Garcetti said, with a goal of having 300 across the county.
The Los Angeles Convention Center is now ready to receive patients as needed, with 175 beds for non-coronavirus patients. If needed, the center will also treat COVID-19 patients on another side of the building, the mayor said.
Garcetti pointed out Friday that the stay-at-home order has been in place for a full month now.
“It’s been a rough ride for everybody, and this was tough week. We buried more dead this week than any other week during this crisis,” he said.
Despite the notion that people are starting to fray from the order, he said 99.9% of Angelenos are staying home. He urged people to continue to do so saying, “COVID-19 doesn’t care how nice the weather is.”
After applications closed Thursday for the first round of the Angeleno Cards — a prepaid debit card with up to $1,500 for families in need — the mayor said Friday that 454,176 applications were submitted. Nearly $1 million was donated to fund the cards, but it’s not enough to give one to every applicant, the mayor said.
The mayor even said, in response to a question, that he has donated his salary from this month to the initiative, and urged anyone who can, to donate too.
The briefing comes after the mayor published an op-ed for CNN, calling for a federally funded initiative, CARES Corps, to help accelerate economic recovery from the pandemic and strengthen the nation’s response to COVID-19.
“Cities and local communities are where we’re doing the most effective work to stop the spread of this virus and save lives,” Garcetti said. “Like the Peace Corps and Teacher Corps before it, CARES Corps would put the power, resources, and reach of the federal government into solving a generational challenge that impacts the lives of every American.”
Air travel in L.A. has dropped by 95% — the biggest drop in flights in Los Angeles International Airport history, the mayor said Thursday.
Also on Thursday, actor Sean Penn joined the city briefing to discuss how his nonprofit, CORE, is running five drive-thru testing sites across L.A. County. And, the L.A. Fire Department announced that 911 callers are now able to video chat with physicians and nurses.
The city also announced a free meal service for L.A. seniors on Wednesday and highlighted a partnership with the county and with USC for antibody testing to determine COVID-19 immunity.
The mayor has been holding a remote briefing every weekday and on Sundays at 5:15 p.m. via Facebook Live.
