Mississippi has only 6 open ICU beds left amid Delta 'tsunami'
The rapid spread of the highly infectious Delta variant has pushed U.S. COVID-19 cases to an average of 94,000 a day, the highest number since mid-February, and COVID-19 deaths are up 75 percent in the past two weeks to an average of 426 a day, from 244. Hospitals are once more being overwhelmed in parts of the country, especially those with low vaccination rates.
More than 40 percent of all U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations are in four states: Georgia (38 percent of the population fully vaccinated), Louisiana (38 percent vaccinated), Florida (49 percent vaccinated), and Mississippi (35 percent vaccinated). Mississippi hospitals had nearly 1,200 COVID-19 patients as of Thursday, and "as of midweek, Mississippi had just six open intensive care beds in the entire state," The Associated Press reports.
The Delta variant is "sweeping across Mississippi like a tsunami," with no end in sight, said State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Nationwide, about 45,000 COVID-19 patients are in the hospital, a number that has grown fourfold in the past month but is well below the nearly 124,000 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in January, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Some states are hitting new pandemic records, though.
In Louisiana, roughly 2,350 coronavirus patients are in hospitals, some of which are delaying elective surgery and, in one case, an organ transplant. In Georgia, with 2,600 COVID-19 patients, dozens of hospitals say they have had to turn away patients this week. And Florida has more than 12,500 hospitalized COVID-19 patients as of Thursday, more than 2,500 of them in the ICU.
"We are seeing a surge like we've not seen before in terms of the patients coming," Dr. Marc Napp, chief medical officer for Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, Florida, told AP on Wednesday. "There are only so many beds, so many doctors, only so many nurses."
Texas hospitals are dealing with both skyrocketing COVID-19 cases and "historically low staffing levels," The Texas Tribune reports. The state has 23,000 more unfilled jobs for registered nurses than there are nurses seeking to fill them, the Texas Workforce Commission found. Nurses, burned out after a brutal year fighting COVID-19, are either leaving nursing or taking higher-paying jobs or hiring bonuses to work elsewhere.
"If we don't have enough nurses, we close units," Joycesarah McCabe, chief of nursing at Goodall-Witcher Healthcare hospital near Waco, tells the Tribune. "We close hospitals."
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
-
'Make legal immigration a more plausible option'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
LA-to-Las Vegas high-speed rail line breaks ground
Speed Read The railway will be ready as soon as 2028
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Israel's military intelligence chief resigns
Speed Read Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva is the first leader to quit for failing to prevent the Hamas attack in October
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Texas dairy worker gets bird flu from infected cow
Speed Read The virus has been spreading among cattle in Texas, Kansas, Michigan and New Mexico
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Dengue hits the Americas hard and early
Speed Read Puerto Rico has declared an epidemic as dengue cases surge
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Covid four years on: have we got over the pandemic?
Today's Big Question Brits suffering from both lockdown nostalgia and collective trauma that refuses to go away
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published
-
US bans final type of asbestos
Speed Read Exposure to asbestos causes about 40,000 deaths in the U.S. each year
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
The hollow classroom
Opinion Remote school let kids down. It will take much more than extra tutoring for kids to recover.
By Mark Gimein Published
-
Excess screen time is making children only see what is in front of them
Under the radar The future is looking blurry. And very nearsighted.
By Devika Rao, The Week US Published
-
Covid-19: what to know about UK's new Juno and Pirola variants
in depth Rapidly spreading new JN.1 strain is 'yet another reminder that the pandemic is far from over'
By Arion McNicoll, The Week UK Published
-
Long-term respiratory illness is here to stay
The Explainer Covid is not the only disease with a long version
By Devika Rao, The Week US Published