Does California have enough hospital beds as COVID-19 cases increase?
Ediz Tiyansan
02:24

The number of people hospitalized with coronavirus in California has soared in the last two weeks, an alarming sign of how rapidly COVID-19 is spreading and the intense pressure it's putting on the state's medical infrastructure. 

As a result, the state's governor and many city officials have reinstituted stricter measures in an attempt to reverse the current trend. 

"With that, we have specifically targeted our efforts to close indoor operations -- and I want to reinforce this, indoor operations -- in restaurants, wineries and tasting rooms, movie theaters, family entertainment, broadly defined by guidelines that we had previously put out, zoos, museums and card rooms in this state," says Gavin Newsom, Governor of California. 

The move comes, as the number of new COVID-19 infections has seen daily records in the last two weeks and the number of people hospitalized with coronavirus has jumped 56% across California.

Christina Ghaly, Director of LA County Dept. of Health Services says hospital beds could be inadequate. "If the predicted increase in new patients requiring hospitalizations materializes as these charts indicate it might the number of hospital beds could become inadequate in the next few weeks. In many cases, the people who will need these beds have already been exposed to COVID-19 because again what is happening in our hospitals is reflective of what happened a couple of weeks ago in our communities."

CGTN's Ediz Tiyansan takes a look.