This archive report was first published on 10 July 2020.
July 10, 2020, marked a critical point in the Covid-19 pandemic, with hospitals across the country facing unprecedented pressure to accommodate the rising number of patients.
While hospital bed capacity, including intensive care units (ICUs), is often used as a gauge of a region's healthcare infrastructure, experts warn that this metric does not provide a complete picture of the pandemic's severity.
According to Jay Wolfson, a professor of public health at the University of South Florida, the real challenge lies in staffing and equipment, rather than simply converting regular beds into ICU capability.
"The trick is going to be staffing," Wolfson said. "If you get people burned out, they get sick, then you lose critical care personnel."
At the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, emergency room waiting times have reached up to four hours, with patients increasingly leaving the site before treatment due to the wait.
As physicians and nurses fall ill with the coronavirus, hospitals are struggling to maintain adequate staffing levels, with some emergency room doctors taking on extra shifts and others being placed on-call, even on their days off.
"The system is clogged up by patients who have recovered but have not yet received the all-clear," said Mohamed Ibrahim Ali, a critical care doctor at AdventHealth North Pinellas near St. Petersburg, Florida.
Roopa Ganga, an infectious disease specialist at two hospitals near Tampa, expressed concerns about the lack of remdesivir, the antiviral drug, and the aggressive discharge of patients, which can lead to worsening symptoms upon readmission.
