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Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/i...ented-strain-as-coronavirus-surges/ar-AAS5yoT
As Omicron variant spreads, New England hospitals are under unprecedented strain
Joanna Slater - 8h ago
On a recent morning, Neil Meehan opened a spreadsheet he has come to dread.
It showed the number of intensive-care beds available in an area of New Hampshire that is home to 350,000 people: two.
A day earlier, there was just one. Very often there are none.
Meehan, the chief physician executive at Exeter Hospital, has worked in emergency medicine for nearly three decades. He has lost track of the number of unprecedented things he has witnessed during this second pandemic winter as virus cases and hospitalizations in the state hit record highs.
His hospital has canceled elective surgeries and placed adult patients in pediatric wards. There are members of the National Guard carrying out support tasks. One seriously ill patient had to wait a week for a transfer to a larger hospital that could treat his condition, a move that normally would have taken hours.
“You have duress in the system that I have never seen before,” said Meehan, 56.
Across New England and the northeastern United States, hospitals are struggling with an overwhelming burden of patients amid a covid-19 surge that has struck harder and faster than experts expected, even in some of the most highly vaccinated states in the country.
The infections — nearly all driven by the delta variant, not its new cousin omicron — have led to record covid hospitalizations in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. All three states have experienced their biggest surges in cases since the pandemic began and asked for federal help, another first. President Biden announced Tuesday that the government will send emergency medical teams to Vermont and New Hampshire and ambulance crews to Maine.
In Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, covid hospitalizations have soared in recent weeks, although they remain below previous peaks. Yet the winter surge comes at a time when hospitals were already grappling with a staffing shortage combined with an influx of people who had delayed care and an increase in patients battling mental illness. Doctors fear that a large wave of omicron cases could increase the burden even further...
As Omicron variant spreads, New England hospitals are under unprecedented strain
Joanna Slater - 8h ago
On a recent morning, Neil Meehan opened a spreadsheet he has come to dread.
It showed the number of intensive-care beds available in an area of New Hampshire that is home to 350,000 people: two.
A day earlier, there was just one. Very often there are none.
Meehan, the chief physician executive at Exeter Hospital, has worked in emergency medicine for nearly three decades. He has lost track of the number of unprecedented things he has witnessed during this second pandemic winter as virus cases and hospitalizations in the state hit record highs.
His hospital has canceled elective surgeries and placed adult patients in pediatric wards. There are members of the National Guard carrying out support tasks. One seriously ill patient had to wait a week for a transfer to a larger hospital that could treat his condition, a move that normally would have taken hours.
“You have duress in the system that I have never seen before,” said Meehan, 56.
Across New England and the northeastern United States, hospitals are struggling with an overwhelming burden of patients amid a covid-19 surge that has struck harder and faster than experts expected, even in some of the most highly vaccinated states in the country.
The infections — nearly all driven by the delta variant, not its new cousin omicron — have led to record covid hospitalizations in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. All three states have experienced their biggest surges in cases since the pandemic began and asked for federal help, another first. President Biden announced Tuesday that the government will send emergency medical teams to Vermont and New Hampshire and ambulance crews to Maine.
In Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, covid hospitalizations have soared in recent weeks, although they remain below previous peaks. Yet the winter surge comes at a time when hospitals were already grappling with a staffing shortage combined with an influx of people who had delayed care and an increase in patients battling mental illness. Doctors fear that a large wave of omicron cases could increase the burden even further...
