Interactive Map of where U.S Intensive care units are filling up --NT Times

See Where U.S. Intensive Care Units Are Filling Up A Times analysis found that the number of hospitals with full or nearly full I.C.U.s has doubled nationwide since the beginning of October, and more than two in five hospitals have reached a critical occupancy level. nytimes

The number of hospitals with full or nearly full I.C.U.s has doubled nationwide since the beginning of October, according to a New York Times analysis of data reported by hospitals and released by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Currently, more than two in five U.S. hospitals with intensive care units have reached occupancy levels of 85 percent or higher. When bed availability dwindles, hospitals begin to operate in crisis mode; in California, 85 percent occupancy is the threshold to trigger regional stay-at-home orders. In early October, just a quarter of U.S. hospitals’ I.C.U.s were that full.

Most patients who are hospitalized for Covid-19 do not require intensive care, but those who do tend to stay awhile, meaning additional patients can overwhelm an I.C.U. particularly fast.

“When patients get really sick with Covid, they’re in the hospital for weeks,” said Dr. Arghavan Salles, a physician who has worked in I.C.U.s in New York and Arizona over the course of the pandemic.

“It would be different if people got sick with Covid, and they were in the hospital for three days and they left. We could manage that,” Dr. Salles said. “But once somebody gets that sick, they’re in that room and that bed fighting for their lives for weeks.”

The surge in hospitalizations nationwide has taken a tremendous toll on the country’s health care workers, many of whom are caring for more patients than normal. Many hospitals have added I.C.U. beds to handle the surge of Covid-19 patients, but they still have a limited, fixed number of health care workers available to care for patients.

The personnel shortage is especially critical now that so many hospitals are facing crisis conditions simultaneously, making it more difficult to transfer patients to a less-burdened hospital or hire additional staff members. ...

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