‘There are only so many beds’: COVID-19 surge hits hospitals

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (AP):

Florida hospitals slammed with COVID-19 patients are suspending elective surgeries and putting beds in conference rooms, an auditorium, and a cafeteria. As of midweek, Mississippi had just six open intensive care beds in the entire state.

Georgia medical centres are turning people away. And in Louisiana, an organ transplant had to be postponed, along with other procedures.

“We are seeing a surge like we’ve not seen before in terms of the patients coming,” Dr Marc Napp, chief medical officer for Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, Florida, said on Wednesday. “It’s the sheer number coming in at the same time. There are only so many beds, so many doctors, only so many nurses.”

Coronavirus hospitalisations are surging again as the more contagious Delta variant rages across the country, forcing medical centres to return to a crisis footing just weeks after many closed their COVID-19 wards and field hospitals and dropped other emergency measures.

HOSPITAL ADMISSION QUADRUPLED

The number of people now in the hospital in the US with COVID-19 has almost quadrupled over the past month to nearly 45,000, turning the clock back to early March, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That’s still nowhere close to the nearly 124,000 people who were in the hospital at the very peak of the winter surge in January. But health experts say this wave is perhaps more worrying because it has risen more swiftly than prior ones. Also, a disturbingly large share of patients this time are young adults.

And to the frustration of public-health experts and front-line medical workers, the vast majority of those now hospitalised are unvaccinated.

Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi alone account for more than 40 per cent of all hospitalisations in the country.