The United States Hit a Record 7-Day Average of New COVID-19 Cases as Hospitals Come Under Increased Pressure

(CNN) – Hospitals in the US are under immense pressure as the nation continues to hit record levels of new COVID-19 cases.

“We’re seeing an increasing number of COVID-19 patients, both those who are a little sick and those who are really sick,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, CNN medical analyst and director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital. Health at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

“As that happens, our hospitals fill up and our workers get sick. Our floors are short of technicians, respiratory therapists and nurses,” Ranney said, adding: “We are on the verge of being in a state of crisis.”

Rhode Island is not alone. More than 101,200 COVID-19 patients were in US hospitals on Friday, a record, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Hospital systems and healthcare workers are approaching their breaking points.

“Everywhere we are seeing an increase,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, infectious disease physician and executive associate dean of the Emory University School of Medicine. “And the biggest problem when there is an increase is that it is not the space, it is not the material, it is actually the staff. The staff are tired, sick and I worry that we will run out of staff to care for patients.”

Experts fear a potential increase in infections related to Thanksgiving gatherings that will further stress hospitals and front-line healthcare workers.

Dr. Shirlee Xie, a hospitalist and associate director of hospital medicine at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, said healthcare workers are “suffocating” from fear from their patients and from exhaustion from their colleagues.

“Every day thousands more people get this virus, and we know that means that in a few days, in a week, hundreds of people are going to come to the hospital and hundreds of people are going to die,” he said. she told CNN’s Ana Cabrera, her voice cracking with emotion.

“I think sometimes when you hear statistics like that, you become numb to what those numbers mean,” Xie said. “But for us, the people who are caring for these patients, each number is someone we have to look at and say, ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing else I can do for you.’

As of Friday, the US averaged 182,633 new cases daily over the past week, a record for the country, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. And the average number of daily deaths from COVID-19 for a week reached 2,010 on Friday, the highest since April.

The United States recorded 227,885 cases on Friday alone, the highest count of the pandemic in one day.

There is good news: Vaccine advisers from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are scheduled to meet to discuss Pfizer and Moderna’s requests for emergency use authorization (EUA) of their COVID vaccines. -19, which some state leaders say they hope to get the first doses of in the coming weeks.

But health officials warn that while some Americans may receive a vaccine by the end of the year, the country likely won’t see any significant impacts until late spring.

Meanwhile, experts project an incredibly challenging next few months.

Millions of Californians face stay-at-home orders

More than 278,800 people have lost their lives to the virus in the United States since the pandemic began. More than 10,000 of them were recorded in the four days since early December, with more than 2,500 daily deaths reported in the US each day.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Friday called the accelerating pandemic “the greatest threat to life in Los Angeles that we have ever faced.” Hospitalizations in Los Angeles County have tripled in the past week, he said, and the county is likely to run out of beds in two to four weeks if cases continue to rise.

Hoping to stem the tide, large areas of California have announced new stay-at-home orders, affecting tens of millions of Californians.

The orders came after Governor Gavin Newsom announced a stay-at-home order for regions where the capacity of hospital intensive care units falls below 15%.

San Francisco Bay Area officials issued a stay-at-home order on Friday, restricting the activities of more than 5.8 million people. The order affects Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara, San Francisco counties and the city of Berkeley.

While the Bay Area has not reached that threshold, officials cautioned that they are seeing evidence of transmission over Thanksgiving weekend that could fuel a surge in their community.

“I don’t think we can wait for the new state restrictions to go into effect later this month,” Farnitano said Friday. “We must act quickly to save as many lives as we can. This is an emergency.”

By Saturday, officials in the San Joaquin Valley region, made up of a dozen counties that are home to more than 4 million people in central California, announced stay-at-home orders that go into effect Sunday night after the region’s ICU capacity fell below 15%. The state Department of Public Health confirmed a similar order would go into effect at the same time in Southern California, where ICU availability fell to 12.5% ​​on Saturday.

There are 11 counties in the Southern California region, including five of the most populous counties in the state: Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino. Approximately 23 million people live in the region.

“It really is time we retired and see if we can change this before hospitals get overwhelmed,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, noting California has had a “performing better than average” during the pandemic.

“I see other parts of the country that are still open, even though the case rates and hospitalization rates are much worse than here,” he told CNN. “So I think we are acting correctly.”

On Saturday, the state reported a record 25,068 new cases. The other two regions of the state, Northern California and the Greater Sacramento region, had ICU capabilities greater than 20%.

This is when most Americans will start getting vaccinated

Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN late Friday that healthy Americans, not elderly, with no known underlying health conditions will likely start getting vaccinated in late March or early April.

“The sooner it vaccinates the vast majority of the country, the faster it will have that umbrella of herd immunity, which would be so, so important to bring the level of that virus, well below the threatening level. level, “Fauci said.

Earlier this week, vaccine advisers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted 13-1 to recommend that both healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities be first in line for any vaccine that gets the FDA green light.

Admiral Brett Giroir, undersecretary of health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said Friday that the FDA will consider the authorization of emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine after its external advisory committee meeting on 10 December, with the consideration of the Moderna vaccine. not too far.

According to Giroir, at least 20 million Americans are expected to be able to receive the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the month.

However, a CNN analysis of state plans shows that they will all fall short of what they need to fully vaccinate healthcare workers and long-term care residents. Nationally, the groups included in the first group of Americans number about 24 million people.

“It’s going to be a big challenge. Distribution will be crucial,” former FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told CNN on Saturday, adding that it will be up to states to prioritize who should get vaccinated first.

On top of that, the first few shots require two doses, so officials will also need to keep track of how many doses each individual has received.

“This is going to be almost as difficult as making the vaccine itself,” Hamburg said.

But the start of vaccines will not spell the end of COVID-19, and top public health officials warn that face masks will continue to play a crucial role in helping slow the spread of the virus.

In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper this week, President-elect Joe Biden said that on his first day in office he would ask all Americans to wear masks in public for 100 days to combat the spread of the virus.

“Only 100 days to mask, not forever. A hundred days. And I think we will see a significant reduction,” Biden said.

The message was perhaps put more succinctly by the CDC in a tweet Saturday afternoon that read: “JUST WEAR YOUR MASK.”

This story was first published on CNN.com, “The United States hit a record 7-day average of new Covid-19 cases as hospitals come under increased pressure.”