US hospitalisations reach a record high

COVID-19 hospitalisations in the United States hit an all-time high of 61,964 on Tuesday, as the raging pandemic continued to shatter record after record and strain medical facilities.

The number of people hospitalised with the coronavirus, tallied by the COVID Tracking Project, has more than doubled since September, and now exceeds the peak reached early in the pandemic, when 59,940 hospitalised patients were reported on April 15. A second peak in the summer fell just short of matching that record, with 59,718 hospitalisations on July 23.

Those spikes in April and July lasted only a few days and quickly subsided, but as winter approaches experts do not expect that this time. New cases are setting records in much of the United States, and rates of hospitalisations and deaths are following them upward.

The United States surpassed 10 million known cases on Sunday, and is averaging more than 111,000 new cases a day, a record.

The critical staff shortage, especially in Western states that struggle to attract doctors and other medical workers even in the best of times, is causing growing alarm, and driving some places to take extraordinary measures.

Gov. Douglas J. Burgum of North Dakota, which has the worst infection and death rates per person in the country, announced on Monday that health care workers who have tested positive but have no symptoms could continue to work in hospitals and nursing homes under certain restrictions, including that they treat only COVID-19 patients.

When cases spiked in New York in April and in the South over the summer, health care professionals flew in from elsewhere to help. But now, officials describe a kind of national gridlock.

“Everywhere is either hard hit or is watching their COVID numbers go up, and are expecting to get a lot of flu patients,” said Nancy Foster, a vice president of the American Hospital Association. “The ability of health care professionals to pick up and leave their hometowns is very limited.”

© 2020 New York Times News Service