ICU wards fill as COVID-19 cases rise in U.S. states

Some hospitals in Texas are running out of intensive care unit ( ICU) beds for COVID-19 patients, turning to surge capacity that they expect will enable them to handle rising coronavirus cases for another couple of weeks.

Spikes of cases in several U. S. states including Texas, Arizona and Florida are raising concerns that the United States is relaxing lockdowns too fast and that hospitals may run out of space.

Houston has considered turning part of a local stadium complex into excess hospital capacity — but local officials say that’s not part of their immediate plans.

The Texas Medical Center system in Houston was expected to fill its last ICU bed on Thursday, but it has created a COVID “war room” and can handle a 66- percent surge in additional ICU patients with strategies including reassigning staff, delaying elective procedures, putting beds closer together and employing regular beds for emergency use.

They calculate they will run out of space on July 6 if the current increase in Texas severe cases continues.

The ICU at nearby Houston Methodist was also nearly at capacity as of Thursday.

Staff there are preparing to surge, and said that their previous experience with coronavirus patients has helped them save beds in the hospital’s ward for the most severe cases.

“We’re not intubating as many patients, we have lots of drugs like convalescent plasma and remdesivir, and our process of proning patients, ( putting them on their stomachs) is allowing us to manage a lot more patients on acute care floors then we were able to do in March and April,” said hospital intensive care unit chief Dr. Faisal Masud.

In Arizona, the number of adult intensive care beds were at 88- per- cent occupancy statewide as cases continued to surge.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey said on Thursday that his state has the hospital capacity to handle the influx of patients despite increasing numbers of occupied hospital beds, intensive care beds and ventilators being used.

Arizona has the ability to reopen a shuttered hospital and open field hospitals to help handle surges in ill patients.

In Florida, COVID- 19 hospital patients at Adventhealth Systems are younger than the wave earlier in the pandemic and less likely to need critical care, said Dr. Vincent Hsu, Adventhealth’s infection control officer for Florida.

Meanwhile, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday criticized states that reopened their economies before getting the novel coronavirus under control, saying there was “undeniable, irrefutable evidence” those states made a mistake.