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In the United States, while outgoing President Donald Trump is busy trying to reverse the election result, the second wave of coronavirus has hit in force in many states, where, after weeks of increasing new cases, hospitals are near the limit. capacity, or has already reached it.
The country broke the historical record for beds occupied by COVID patients on Tuesday: 61,964, more than the record of 59,940 on April 15. Since Tuesday, the numbers have risen further and have already exceeded 65,000, according to the COVID Tracing Project, a voluntary initiative that collects coronavirus data in the United States, which is trusted and used by many media outlets. The daily number of new cases also reached a new record: on Wednesday it was 144,270, the eighth consecutive day that new cases of coronavirus in the country are at least 100,000 daily.
This situation, unfortunately, was highly anticipated. In early November, when the Trump administration claimed the United States had “turned the corner” on the pandemic in the pre-election climate, said Anthony Fauci, an immunologist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). quite the contrary: «Much pain awaits us. This is not a good situation. All the stars align against us as the fall and winter seasons progress, and people gather inside. We couldn’t be in a worse situation. ” Today, talking to him New York Times, Dr. Dara Kass of Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York said “the whole country is out of control.” Many hospitals are close to saturation, health personnel are in short supply, and state governors have once again applied restrictive measures to the population.
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In Illinois At least 10,000 cases a day have been recorded in the last week, and the number of hospitalized COVID patients has surpassed the April record. State Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said Tuesday that many regions faced a “much higher rate of hospitalization” than the first wave last spring, and that outside of Chicago “many communities in Illinois are facing the worst. until now”. On Monday, a group of healthcare workers sent a letter to the governor and mayor of Chicago predicting that the state “will exceed the ICU’s bed capacity by Thanksgiving Day” (November 26) and that “now we are almost at the point of deciding who receives treatment and who does not.
A doctor treats a patient with COVID in the intensive care unit at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston. (Photo by Go Nakamura / Getty Images)
the Texas It is the US state with the most cases, more than a million. Since October, tents have been set up outside El Paso hospitals to house patients who are not in the usual facilities. The El Paso Convention Center, a building where concerts and trade shows often take place, has also been filled with hospital beds. The situation is such that city administrators have started using large refrigerated trucks as emergency morgues: they filled six and earlier this week asked for four more. “I’ve seen more deaths in the last three weeks than I’ve seen in a year,” Nick Rose, a nurse from El Paso, told local television. KFOX.
In OhioThis week, the governor tightened the requirement to wear masks and announced new restrictions on gatherings. “We cannot allow the virus to circulate undisturbed,” he said. Bruce Vanderhoff, the chief physician of the state health department, said the increase in hospitalized patients is “unprecedented” and that “we are running out of trained health personnel.” In Oklahoma, the local health department said that only 7 percent of ICU beds remained empty statewide, 62 in all.
Nello Utah Governor Gary Herbert recently made wearing masks mandatory and imposed some restrictions on social events. “This is a sacrifice for all of us,” he said. “But reduce the spread [del coronavirus] will make a difference for our weary healthcare workers who desperately need our help. “The governor said Monday that” we are at the point of not being able to accommodate more people [negli ospedali]… especially in intensive care units ”.
In Wisconsin The local health department has placed 65 of the 72 counties in the state in the category of “critically high” risk: it is a new category that did not exist until a few days ago and that is three times more serious than the most serious of the categories Earlier, it was “Very High”. Counties in this new category have at least 1,000 positives for every 100,000 residents. Also according to the local department, 90 percent of all hospital beds in the state are full. The Mayo Clinic Health System, which operates several hospitals in the area, said it had run out of beds in the northwest of the state.
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Also in North Dakota the situation of the hospitals is critical. Governor Doug Burgum said the state’s hospitals have now reached 100 percent capacity. “Our hospitals are under enormous pressure,” he said. In the state, the situation of health workers is also serious: few and many have been infected. That is why Burgum has made a very controversial decision: it will allow nurses to continue working even if they are positive, as long as they are asymptomatic.
The famous photo in which Donald Trump removes his mask after his hospitalization. (Win McNamee / Getty Images)
The situation for healthcare workers is generally dire across the United States. Hospitals across the country have begun hiring new staff, mostly nurses, but trained staff is scarce. Janis Orlowski of the Association of American Medical Colleges told the Washington Post that in many hospitals doctors and operators are on the verge of exhaustion, shifts are exhausting and all available resources have been invested in the fight against the coronavirus. Also, as in spring, in some areas there is still a shortage of medical devices such as gloves and masks. In Philadelphia, he wrote the CNN, 1,500 nurses from the Pennsylvania Association of Nursing and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) are considering striking because “they have been pushed to the limit by unsafe staff management that seriously endangers the patient’s health,” they said in a statement. .
The coronavirus crisis is severe around the world, but there are particular leadership issues in the United States. The Trump administration has consistently tried to minimize risk, and local governments, like the federal government, have often politicized the rules to contain contagion. Some administrations, like New York, have tried to be more reactive in this second wave, and Governor Andrew Cuomo has imposed new tightening measures long before the data worsening, although it is not said that it will be enough. Other states have waited a long time, allowing the infection to spread. According to research by Aarp, a large retiree association, only 34 states (plus the District of Columbia) require their citizens to wear face masks.
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Joe Biden, the president-elect, has promised to implement extraordinary measures from his first day in office to stop the contagion. He has already created a task force of scientists and plans to use emergency laws to increase testing capacity and increase production of the machinery and tools that hospitals need. But many of his proposals may be less effective due to the reluctance of some states to enact restrictive public health measures and the likely Republican majority in the Senate (there are still two decisive votes at the polls in January). For example, Biden likely does not have the legal authority to enforce the use of face masks at the federal level, as he promised. Additionally, the Senate could block or dilute the Biden administration’s attempts to pass a financial support package, which has been pending in Congress for months.
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