January 11, 2022 – According to a report from The Washington Post, the United States has surpassed the previous record of hospitalization with 145,982 positive COVID-19 cases in one day since the pandemic started.
The previous record of 142,273 hospitalizations was from January 14, 2021, before vaccines were widely available. Some disease modelers are expecting that number to double – in the range of 275,000 to 300,000 – before February.
Nurses and other healthcare workers are also getting sick, which is raising the nurse-to-patient ratios in some places to high levels. Russell Buhr, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, told The Post, “Our systems and personnel are under extreme strain and I’m not sure how long we can sustain it.”
That strain is nothing new for healthcare workers after the past two years, but it is reaching dangerous and complex levels when the ratios are off. Anthony Fauci said, “A team that is used to carrying 8 patients at once can probably safely expand to ten. But if the complexity of care means that the team is usually capped at 4 or 5 patients, ten could become a challenge and pose new risks.”