At the same time, staffing shortages at regional hospitals have been compounded by a recent increase in infections among their staff. At FF Thompson Hospital in Canandaigua, NY, 45 of the hospital’s 1,750 workers were recently infected with the virus, and there are 252 unfilled job openings.
“Covid is here, Covid is a problem, but the main challenge here is staffing,” said Michael Stapleton, the hospital’s chief operating officer.
Other hotspots are also putting pressure on healthcare systems. In Puerto Rico245 people on the island have been hospitalized this week with the virus, five times more than a month ago.
Experts agree that although hospital admissions overall lag behind trends in new cases, they are still among the most reliable types of data on the pandemic, experts agree – more than official reports of positive test results, experts say that the true number of infections is significantly lower.
Hospitalizations are reported quite strictly. “For hospital data, even if all the people are not hospitalized for Covid, we can be sure that the numbers are pretty accurate,” said Dr. Eric S. Toner, a senior scholar at the Center for Health Security at Johns said the Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “So that’s the best data source we have right now. The number of new Covid admissions is the number that interests me the most.”
About 11% of people hospitalized with coronavirus in the United States were in intensive care, as of Wednesday, according to federal data.
The CDC is also closely monitoring the nature of hospitalizations. “We are seeing less oxygen use, less ICU stays, and fortunately, we have not seen any increase in deaths related to them,” compared with previous phases of the pandemic. , Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the agency, said last week.
