The daily average number of people that are being hospitalized for Covid is now higher than any other spike in cases, with last winter being an exception.
This serves as a scary reminder of the toll the pandemic is taking on Americans.
The 100,000 marks were crossed as a daily average. For the first time since March, Covid deaths have also increased to an average of over 1000 every day.
Daily Covid Cases Crosses An Average of 100,000
500% has been the increase in hospitalizations across the nation, over the course of the last 2 months.
A large number of unvaccinated people and the surge in the spread of the Delta variant has fueled this sudden increase.
In southern states, the situation is particularly bleak. These states have the country’s lowest vaccination rates and there is strong opposition to mandates regarding masks.
Over 16,000 people have been hospitalized in Florida. This is the #1 state for hospitalizations followed by Texas. This is according to data collected from the US Department of Health and Human Services.
The University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville requested assistance from the National Guard as the number of hospitalizations and cases rose in Tennessee.
A pulmonologist in Knoxville, Dr. Shannon Byrd, said that she has never seen anything like this before.
She added that it has been bringing families down and tearing them apart.
These families are experiencing death like never before and this leaves the survivors with a lot of trauma and funerals to attend.
A rising shortage of nurses has hindered the treatment given to patients with Covid as the latest surge is overwhelming hospitals. This is also leading to rushed and inadequate care and longer waiting times at emergency rooms.
1 in 5 ICUs this month have reached or exceeded 95 percent of beds full.
Hospitals, in earlier spikes, were forced to create ICUs that were makeshift in areas that had been reserved for other types of care.
They were sometimes even required to set up beds in hallways or rooms that were spare.
It has been said by experts that the existing standards of care might be hard or even impossible to maintain when the ICUs at hospitals are almost 95% occupied.
The Director of pulmonary critical care for the Singing River Health System in Mississippi, Dr. Ijlal Babar said that the intake of younger, unvaccinated patients that had been affected by Covid was the reason that care across the system’s hospitals was hampered.
He said that the ventilators and beds have been occupied by these patients that have been lingering and that a lot of other patients that need health care haven’t been receiving it due to the unavailability of ICU beds, nurses, and even ventilators.
Babar, like multiple health care workers, is frustrated with the refusal of many residents to get vaccinated even after the loss of a member of their family to Covid.
He said that nobody has seen these families go out and talk about the benefits of the vaccine. He added that nobody expressed any remorse and that it has become something they just do not believe in.
In a large new study that was conducted, almost half of the patients who had been infected with Covid were still suffering from a symptom of their illness an entire year after being hospitalized.
It is being added to evidence that suggests that recovery is not an easy task after being affected by the virus.
Researchers, after looking at the patients 6 months after hospitalization, found that 49% of them still struggled with mental health problems.
12 months later, anxiety and depression became more prevalent than before.
