Hospital ICUs serving a third of Americans are nearing capacity

Intensive Care Units at dozens of hospitals across the U.S. are at or over capacity, while hundreds more are close to it as COVID-19 cases continue to surge.

Hospitals serving areas where more than 100 million Americans live reported having less than 15 percent of ICU beds open last week, Department of Health and Human Services data analyzed by The New York Times showed. In areas serving 1 in 10 Americans, hospitals reported their ICUs were totally full or had less than 5 percent of beds available.

Hospital workers had plenty of stories to back up this data. Dr. Jeffrey Sather, chief of medical staff at a North Dakota hospital, told the Times he has devoted a whole floor of his six-story hospital to coronavirus patients, but they continue overloading an over-capacity emergency room. Other hospitals in the area are also overloaded and unable to take transfers to lessen Sather's hospital's burden.

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Health care experts say it's impossible for hospital workers to keep up top care when beds are this overloaded. Thomas Tsai, an assistant professor of health policy at Harvard University, told the Times that because the rate at which coronavirus patients are going to the hospitals is decreasing, it suggests hospitals are rationing who they will admit. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) is expected to soon formalize this process by allowing hospitals to ration care based on survival prospects.