Advances in Covid-19 treatment have shortened hospital stays, easing capacity strains. But doctors and health-care disaster experts say the gains are not enough to meet a sustained rise in hospitalizations, particularly in remote pockets of the country that have smaller hospitals and fewer medical professionals.
Nationally, a spring surge of Covid-19 hospitalizations peaked in mid-April and was followed by a second wave in late July. The latest rise began in late September, data from the Covid Tracking Project show, with the number soaring 60% from the low point that month. People hospitalized with Covid-19 in the U.S. and its territories reached 46,095 on Thursday.
Treatment of the disease remains limited and too many patients with lengthy stays can still overwhelm available doctors and nurses and swamp emergency departments and intensive-care units, they say.
Those risks are greater now as fatigue with restrictions on public life is complicating efforts to stem contagion. The virus is also reaching more sparsely populated regions of the U.S. where many hospitals are small and farther apart. Coinciding with the latest surge, the nation has entered flu season, which typically fills hospital beds each year.
“It’s just a numbers game,” said Dixie Harris, an intensive-care doctor in Utah, who is anxiously making her own calculations for how long beds will remain available at her hospital in Salt Lake City.
