In large and growing parts of the country, severely ill Americans in need of intensive care have nowhere to go.
“One in 10 Americans — across a large swath of the Midwest, South and Southwest — lives in an area where intensive care beds are either completely full, or fewer than 5 percent of beds are available,” reports the New York Times.
“At these levels, experts say maintaining existing standards of care for the sickest patients may be difficult or impossible.”
The cause, of course, is Covid-19.
Newly released federal health data show that due to coronavirus infections, hospitals serving more than 100 million Americans — roughly one-third of the population — had less than 15% of their ICU beds available last week.
A New York Times map illustrates the ICU crisis county-by-county:
“This disease progresses very quickly and can get very ugly very fast. When you don’t have that capacity, that means people will die,” Beth Blauer, director of the Centers for Civic Impact at Johns Hopkins University, told the Times.
The latest figures illustrate the rapid spread of the pandemic: since the start of November, the number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus nationwide has doubled to well over 100,000.
The crisis is especially acute in rural areas, as Blauer of Johns Hopkins told the Times:
“If you’re living in a place where there’s no ICU bed for 100 miles, you have to be incredibly careful about the social interaction that you allow the community to take,” she said.
Part of that surge is blamed on the Thanksgiving holiday, two weeks aago, when millions of Americans gathered to celebrate, many without taking appropriate precautions.
Experts say it’s only the beginning of the so-called “Thanksgiving bump” — and warn the week-long Christmas-New Year’s period will likely be even worse.
In some places, the shortage of ICU beds has forced officials to take drastic measures.
Hospitals in parts of California have no ICU beds available at all; last week Gov. Gavin Newsome issued emergency stay-at-home orders for areas where more than 85% of ICU beds are occupied.
“It is the worst we have seen, and it’s continuing to worsen,” Dr. Ahmad Kamal of Santa Clara County told the Los Angeles Times.
The stories are similar across the country, from Michigan to South Florda, West Texas to North Dakota.
In New Mexico, where ICU beds are full across the state, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is expected to announce soon that hospitals will be allowed to “ration care based on who is most likely to survive,” the New York Times says.
That time has not yet come, but it’s not far off, reports the Albuquerque Journal.
“A patient’s chance of survival – not age, occupation or ability to pay – will guide the rationing of medical treatment as New Mexico prepares to invoke crisis standards of care in its hospitals,” the Journal says.
There’s evidence that some physicians are already limiting care, Dr. Thomas Tsai of Harvard University told the New York Times.
He noted that in recent weeks, the rate at which Covid-19 patients are going to hospitals has started decreasing.
“That suggests that there’s some rationing and stricter triage criteria about who gets admitted as hospitals remain full,” he said.
