Hospitalizations are straining health-care workers from New Hampshire to California as Americans continue to contract the Covid-19 virus at an elevated rate.
The number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 hit a record high of more than 114,000 on Thursday, a 6.5% increase over the past week, and an increase of about 48% in the past month. Thirteen states saw increases in hospitalizations from the previous week, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
In just two months, the number of hospitalizations in New York has increased sixfold, rising to a level not seen since mid-May. In South Carolina, hospitalizations were up 24% from the previous week. Intensive-care unit capacity dropped to 0% in Southern California and the vast San Joaquin Valley on Friday.
“In previous surges in the U.S., they’ve been regional,” said Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of California San Francisco. “One of the main reasons why this wave is more potentially lethal and terrifying than previous waves is that you have no give, there is no give in the system.”
There were 21,000 people in intensive-care units across the country Thursday, an increase of more than 40% in the past month. Death tolls have also remained elevated. The country reported 3,270 deaths on Thursday, the third-highest figure of the pandemic.
Thomas Russo, head of infectious disease at Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo, said people were becoming used to a daily death toll that now often surpasses that of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“We’re pretty much beating that most days now,” he said. “It’s almost like they’re getting used to this onslaught.”
And while vaccines have begun rolling out, their impact won’t realistically begin to be felt until late February or March, Dr. Russo said, because there aren’t enough yet, and they take weeks to become effective.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has stockpiled 5,000 body bags, stationed 60 refrigerated storage containers and activated a mutual aid system for county coroners. Carmela Coyle, chief executive of the California Hospitals Association, said the numbers most alarming were the numbers of people testing positive for the virus.
California reported more than 100,000 new cases over a two-day period this week.
“Those numbers are astronomical,” Ms. Coyle said. “So the surge that we are in, the surge that we are preparing for, will be like nothing that we have seen.”
Ms. Coyle said that she expects about 12% of those people to be hospitalized in the coming weeks. The underlying issue in the state is staff, with doctors and nurses falling ill with the virus themselves, and hospitals having little ability to call on reinforcements such as traveling nurses.
“We’ve got to get our arms around the viral spread,” Ms. Coyle said. “Because if we don’t, we are chewing through our most precious resource, and that is those highly trained caregivers at the bedside.”