{"id":12867,"date":"2021-12-18T09:14:17","date_gmt":"2021-12-18T17:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=12867"},"modified":"2021-12-18T09:17:27","modified_gmt":"2021-12-18T17:17:27","slug":"doctors-and-nurses-are-living-in-a-constant-crisis-as-covid-fills-hospitals-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=12867","title":{"rendered":"“Doctors and Nurses Are \u2018Living in a Constant Crisis\u2019 as Covid Fills Hospitals”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By <\/span>Mitch Smith<\/a>, December 18, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

Hospitalizations across the country have increased 20 percent in two weeks, taxing already exhausted health care workers as the United States confronts the Omicron variant.<\/p>\n

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\"Josh<\/picture><\/div>
Josh Alba, a nurse, in a hallway of the Covid intensive care unit at Covenant HealthCare in Saginaw, Mich.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Isadora Kosofsky for The New York Times<\/span>\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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SAGINAW, Mich. \u2014 On the top floor of the hospital, in the unit that houses the sickest Covid-19 patients, 13 of the 14 beds were occupied. In the one empty room, a person had just died.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Through surge after surge, caregivers in the unit at Covenant HealthCare in Saginaw, Mich., have helped ailing patients say goodbye to their relatives on video calls. The medical workers have cried in the dimly lit hallways. They have seen caseloads wane, only to watch beds fill up again. Mostly, they have learned to fear the worst.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou come back to work and you ask who died,\u201d said Bridget Klingenberg, an intensive care nurse at Covenant, where staff levels are so strained that the Defense Department recently sent reinforcements<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t think people understand the toll that that takes unless you\u2019ve actually done it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The highly contagious Omicron variant arrives in the United States at a moment when there is little capacity left in hospitals, especially in the Midwest and Northeast, where case rates are the highest, and where many health care workers are still contending with the Delta variant. Some researchers are hopeful that Omicron may cause less severe disease than Delta, but health officials still worry that the new variant could send a medical system already under pressure to the breaking point.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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About 1,300 Americans are dying from the coronavirus each day. The national case, death and hospitalization rates remain well below those seen last winter, before vaccines were widely available. But suddenly, positive tests are growing. State officials in New York reported more than 20,000 coronavirus cases on Friday, which they said was more than on any other day of the pandemic. In Connecticut and Maine, reports of new infections have grown by around 150 percent in the last two weeks. In Ohio and Indiana, hospitalization rates are approaching those seen during last winter\u2019s devastating wave.<\/p>\n

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Bridget Klingenberg\u00a0and her colleagues helped move a patient who was no longer contagious into prone position.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Isadora Kosofsky for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ms. Klingenberg has been caring for coronavirus patients since the start of the pandemic, when she volunteered to work on the Covid unit.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Isadora Kosofsky for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cLiving in a constant crisis for 20 months-plus is a little overwhelming,\u201d said Dr. Matthew Deibel, the medical director for emergency care at Covenant, where patients must sometimes wait hours to be seen because of a shortage of beds and staff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n