Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
A case surge is forcing patients to be moved to hospital hallways.
Those with less-severe illness in hallway beds
A fast-rising tide of new coronavirus cases is flooding emergency rooms in parts of the United States, with some patients moved into hallways and nurses working extra shifts to keep up with the surge.
Patients struggling to breathe are being placed on ventilators in emergency wards because intensive care units are full, officials say, and the near-constant care they require is overtaxing workers who also are treating more typical ER cases like chest pains, infections and fractures.
In Texas, Dr. Alison Haddock of the Baylor College of Medicine said the situation is worse than after Hurricane Harvey, which swamped Houston with floodwaters in 2017. The state reported a daily record for virus deaths Friday and more than 10,000 confirmed cases for the fourth consecutive day.
“I’ve never seen anything like this COVID surge,” said Haddock, who has worked in emergency rooms since 2007. “We’re doing our best, but we’re not an ICU.”
Patients are waiting “hours and hours” to get admitted, she said, and the least-sick people are lying in beds in halls to make room for the most seriously ill.
In Florida, hospitals say they are in desperate need of remdesivir — a medication that has been shown to shorten average hospitalization times — to treat the coronavirus patients who are filling up beds.
Gov. Ron DeSantis announced 30,000 vials of the drug were being shipped to the state — enough to treat about 5,000 patients.
On Saturday, Florida reported more than 10,200 new cases of the virus and 90 additional deaths, while Missouri recorded a pandemic-high 958 new cases in one day. Arizona, which conducts periodic reviews of death certificates, reclassified 106 deaths as having been from COVID-19, bringing the number of fatalities reported Saturday to 147.
Arizona health officials reported a daily record of 147 deaths from the coronavirus and 2,742 new confirmed cases.
The Department of Health Services say the additional deaths included 106 newly attributed to COVID-19 after health officials’ latest periodic reviews of death certificates. It says the additional cases didn’t include figures from a laboratory that missed the reporting cutoff. The department says the missing cases will be reported Sunday.
The additional deaths and cases reported Saturday increased the statewide confirmed totals to 2,730 deaths and 141,265 infections.
Dr. Robert Hancock, who works at multiple hospitals in Texas and Oklahoma and serves as president of the Texas College of Emergency Physicians, said some Texas emergency rooms are facing backups of patients awaiting ICU beds.
“Unfortunately, because of the increased demand for personnel, there typically isn’t anybody free to come down to the ER to help a lot of times from a nursing standpoint,” he said.