A USA TODAY analysis shows there could be six seriously ill patients for every existing US hospital bed. No state is prepared.
No state in the U.S. will have enough room to treat novel coronavirus patients if the surge in severe cases here mirrors that in other countries.
“Unless we are able to implement dramatic isolation measures like some places in China, we’ll be presented with overwhelming numbers of coronavirus patients – two to 10 times as we see at peak influenza times,” said Dr. James Lawler, who researches emerging diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the Global Center for Health Security.
But some still will need medical care – or at least medical isolation – at some point during the illness. The infection rate of novel coronavirus is still unclear. The analysis used that of a mild flu season. It also assumes that the 13.8% of patients with severe symptoms and 6.1% with critical symptoms would need hospitalization.
Such worst-case scenarios underscore the complex decisions that could face our health care system in the weeks and months ahead. Those figures assume the infections would happen all at once, which is unlikely, and that all beds are empty, when they are not. Nonetheless, experts say such estimates help pinpoint where it will be most critical to slow spread of the disease and develop robust emergency plans. Dr. Gary Wheeler, medical director of infectious disease at the Arkansas Department of Health, said his state is aware that in an outbreak it would likely face shortages of not just beds, but staff and supplies.
States with large elderly populations will fall farther shortFocusing on the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable to complications from the virus, does not improve the outlook in most places. At the local level, about two-thirds of American cities would not have enough beds to serve residents 60 and older who became seriously ill. Based on an evaluation of about 400 metropolitan areas in the United States, some would need to increase their capacity fourfold or more.
Already in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp said this week that “out of an abundance of caution” the state had started to isolate and monitor some people in emergency trailers set up at Hard Labor Creek State Park, which sits between Athens and Atlanta. Georgia reported its first death from the virus on Thursday.
Nurses can wheel a second bed into a private hospital room. Some hospitals’ emergency plans include setting up tents and cots in a parking lot, where they could triage incoming patients. “If people have to be quarantined or have to be isolated, we're finding that healthcare’s being used as sort of safety net for that,” said Kraft, who leads the Clinical Virology Research Laboratory at Emory University School of Medicine. “And that's not going to work if we have really sick people that need help.”
“Just yesterday I was on the phone with someone from a hospital where they need 75 nurses,” Savitsky said. “We’re going to be able to help them out to some extent; we’re not going to be able to get them 75 nurses.” “It could lead to examining the probability of salvaging this patient and that patient,” he said. “It’s a little like in a battlefield. If somebody’s not going to make it, you make them comfortable as best you can.”
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