Oregon and Idaho have joined the list of U.S. states that are running out of I.C.U. beds as both confront a significant rise in new coronavirus infections.
Patrick Allen, the director of the Oregon Health Authority, said in an interview on Saturday that only 50 of the state’s 638 I.C.U. beds were still available. Gov. Brad Little of Idaho, a Republican, said in a statement last week that just four of the state’s nearly 400 beds were still open.
The national Delta-driven surge has filled hospitals in many states. Only a handful have more than 30 percent of their overall I.C.U. beds still available, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, and many have less.
I.C.U.s are equipped with specialized equipment and trained staff who can treat critically ill patients. Experts say maintaining existing standards of care for the sickest patients may be difficult or impossible at hospitals with more than 95 percent I.C.U. occupancy, and throughout the pandemic, hospitals have been forced to improvise solutions when I.C.U. space and staffing have dwindled.
Mr. Little and Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon, a Democrat, each mobilized members of their state’s National Guard last month to add extra hospital staff.
“We are dangerously close to activating statewide crisis standards of care,” Mr. Little said in his statement. “In essence, someone would have to decide who can be treated and who cannot.”
Mr. Little’s state is grappling with its highest surge in Covid-19 hospitalizations to date. Idaho had a seven-day average of 512 hospitalizations on Friday, a number that has grown rapidly since July, according to a New York Times database.
In a presentation last Wednesday, Mr. Little said that hospitals had had to convert other spaces into I.C.U.s to accommodate more patients, and that “those are filling up, too.” His state’s health care system, he said, was not designed to withstand “an unrestrained global pandemic.”
At the end of the presentation, the governor pleaded with people to get vaccinated — the vast majority of Idahoans in intensive care are unvaccinated, he said — adding, “I wish everyone could have seen what I saw in the I.C.U. last night.”
In Oregon, the seven-day average of hospitalizations hit 1,219 on Friday, almost double the previous high reached in December.
The dire numbers don’t do justice to the mounting crisis that is overwhelming hospitals and health care workers in both states, officials said. Mr. Little said that even as hospitals made room for extra I.C.U. beds, they filled up — fast.
Demand for beds in Oregon is also exceeding supply. Mr. Allen, the Oregon health official, said that 127 patients in the state were waiting in emergency departments for beds to open up, though not every hospital in the state reports that figure. He said hospitals in southern Oregon, where vaccination rates were lowest, were especially hard hit.
“We’re on the edge of what we can manage right now,” he said, looking ahead to next week, when children would be returning to school in the most populous parts of the state. “There is not much room for things to get a lot worse.”
Adeel Hassan and Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
"short" - Google News
September 07, 2021 at 02:06AM
https://ift.tt/3yP1SAa
Oregon and Idaho Run Short of I.C.U. Beds as Covid Resurges - The New York Times
"short" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2SLaFAJ
No comments:
Post a Comment