One-third of U.S. hospitals exceeded 90% capacity in ICUs last week, HHS data shows
Increasing coronavirus cases and deaths are causing beds in US hospitals to fill up much faster than expected.
On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released facility-level data from more than 2,000 counties for the first time since the pandemic began.
It found that one in three intensive care units (ICUs) across the country was more than 90 percent full last week, according to a CNN analysis.
Additionally, at least 200 hospitals in any unit did not have more beds available, indicating that medical centers in all regions of the US may soon be at breaking point.
It comes on the heels of the US reporting the fourth consecutive day of record-breaking hospital admissions with 106,671 beds.
On Monday, the HHS released facility-level data from U.S. hospitals from more than 2,000 counties, showing that 1 in 3 hospitals had ICUs that were more than 90% full. Pictured: Medical staff member Susan Paradela puts her hand on a patient at the COVID-19 ICU at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas, December 7
According to the CNN analysis, coronavirus patients occupied 19 percent of the hospital beds and 37 percent of the intensive care beds in the first week of November.
By the first week of December, both figures had risen to 28 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
Another analysis, from the University of Minnesota’s COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project, found that hospitals in 126 counties were at least 90 percent full, reported NPR.
The states with the most counties that achieved this benchmark were Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Texas.
“The new data paints a picture of how a specific hospital is going through the pandemic,” Dr. Pinar Karaca-Mandic, a professor of finance at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, told NPR.
‘I was surprised and overwhelmed [by the release of the data]. Facility level data, the ability to look at an area smaller than a state, is very important. ‘
In an opinion piece in STAT News, Karaca-Mandic said she has also analyzed the data between metro and non-metro areas.
She found that the hospitalization rate for coronavirus in urban areas was five times higher than in non-urban areas, namely 0.99 per 100,000 people, compared to 0.2 per 100,000 people.
In addition, hospitals in non-metropolitan areas had about half the capacity of staffed IC beds.
They had about 12 staffed ICU beds per 100,000 people compared to 23 staffed ICU beds per 100,000 people in metropolitan cities.
“Limited access to hospital beds in non-subways raises important questions about how to address this resource shortage,” she wrote in STAT News.
‘[W]While transferring patients from non-metro hospitals to hospitals in nearby metropolitan areas may have been an option before, peak-related capacity constraints in metro area hospitals can make such transfers more difficult. ‘
Prior to Monday’s data dump, HHS had previously released COVID-19 hospital admission data, but only at the state level
This is the first time the government agency has released local data that health professionals and public health experts have been begging for for months.
The earliest data is dated July 31, and the most recent is November 27.
The HHS said the data will be reported on a weekly basis with seven-day averages collected starting Friday and ending Thursday.
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