US hospitals struggle as COVID beds fill up

DETROIT (AP) —
Hospitals across the United States are struggling to cope with burnout among doctors, nurses and other workers, already buffeted by a crush of patients from the ongoing surge of the COVID-19 delta variant and now bracing for the fallout of another highly transmissible mutation.

Ohio became the latest state to summon the National Guard to help overwhelmed medical facilities.

Experts in Nebraska warned that its hospitals soon may need to ration care.

Medical officials in Kansas and Missouri are delaying surgeries, turning away transfers and desperately trying to hire travelling nurses, as cases double and triple in an eerie reminder of last year's holiday season.

“There is no medical school class that can prepare you for this level of death,” said Dr Jacqueline Pflaum-Carlson, an emergency medicine specialist at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.

“The hits just keep coming.”

The national seven-day average of COVID-19 hospital admissions was 60,000 by Wednesday, far off last winter's peak but 50 per cent higher than in early November, the government reported. 

The situation is more acute in cold-weather regions, where people are increasingly gathering inside and new infections are piling up.

New York state reported Friday that slightly more than 21,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19, a new high since tests became widely available.

The consequences were swift in New York City: The Rockettes Christmas show was scratched for the season, and some Broadway shows cancelled performances because of outbreaks among cast members.

“We are in a situation where we are now facing a very important delta surge and we are looking over our shoulder at an oncoming omicron surge,” Dr Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said of the two COVID-19 variants.

At AdventHealth Shawnee Mission, a hospital near Kansas City, Missouri, chief medical officer Dr. Lisa Hays said the emergency department is experiencing backups sometimes lasting for days.

“The beds are not the issue. It's the nurses to staff the beds. ... And it's all created by rising COVID numbers and burnout,” Hays said.

“Our nurses are burnt out.”

Experts attribute most of the rise in cases and hospitalisations to infections among people who have not been inoculated against the coronavirus.

The government says 61 per cent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated.

Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer at University of Kansas Health System in Kansas City, Kansas, said the "pandemic of the unvaccinated” continues to swamp the hospital and its workers.

“There's no place to go. Our staff are tired. We're going to run out of travellers,” Stites said, referring to visiting health care workers, “and omicron is at our doorstep. This is a tornado warning to our community.”

Ohio's National Guard deployment is one of the largest seen during the pandemic, with more than 1,000 members sent to beleaguered hospitals especially in the Akron, Canton and Cleveland areas.

As of Friday, 4,723 people in the state were hospitalised with the coronavirus, a number last seen about a year ago, Governor Mike DeWine said.

Some staffers were taking only short breaks before punching in for second shifts, he added.

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