The pandemic is spawning new infections at a rate not seen since the end of July.
The coronavirus is engulfing big city hospitals in states including Utah, Wisconsin and Indiana that are running low on nurses and beds and are being forced to set up overflow facilities.
With new daily U.S. cases surpassing 62,000 on Thursday, the prospect of swamped intensive care units is prompting some governors who previously resisted public health orders to weigh new restrictions to ease pressure on their health care systems. From the early days of the pandemic, the availability of ICU beds — and hospitals’ ability to treat people who need life-support equipment like ventilators to breathe — has been an important benchmark for whether local health systems can handle outbreaks.
“Our hospitals are getting overwhelmed,” Republican Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said this week. “The dramatic increase in infections has put the integrity of our health care system at risk.“
The University of Utah Health System, one of the largest hospitals in the state, reported its ICU is 95 percent filled, and health systems in other parts of the country have been forced to relocate patients because of bed and staffing shortages.
Herbert said the National Guard is on standby to build a field hospital in a convention center outside Salt Lake City, and on Tuesday he ordered masks be worn at all outdoor events.
The pandemic is spawning new infections at a rate not seen since the end of July. Hot spots began to cluster in parts of Utah, Indiana, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Missouri, Mississippi and North Dakota as the nationwide average number of daily new cases surged over the past month.
In Indiana, the state is facing “critical ICU bed shortages along with personnel shortages” according to Chief Medical Officer Lindsay Weaver, only three weeks after Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb removed most Covid-related restrictions. Officials have put out a call for volunteers to help fill staffing shortages in hard-hit facilities near the Michigan and Kentucky borders.
Indiana has fewer than one-third of its ICU beds available, according to its health department, and there are more than 1,300 patients in the hospital, the most since May and up 67 percent in three weeks.
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The coronavirus is engulfing big city hospitals in states including Utah, Wisconsin and Indiana that are running low on nurses and beds and are being forced to set up overflow facilities https://t.co/KsKVxxN4Wc
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