Hits ‘keep coming’: Hospitals struggle as COVID beds fill

DETROIT — Hospitals across the country 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 traveling 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% 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 Saturday that slightly more than 21,900 people had tested positive for COVID-19 the day before, a new high since tests became widely available. Consequences of the latest surge have been swift in New York City: The Rockettes Christmas show was scratched for the season; some Broadway shows canceled performances because of outbreaks among cast members; and “Saturday Night Live” announced it was taping without a live audience and with only limited cast and crew.

“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 hospitalizations to infections among people who have not been inoculated against the coronavirus.