Record Covid-19 hospitalizations in US could soon force health experts to ration care

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Tue, 2020-12-29 10:31 — mike kraft

Record Covid-19 hospitalizations in US could soon force health experts to ration care The number of patients hospitalized across the US with Covid-19 is the highest it's ever been -- and at this rate health experts warn they may have to ration nurses, respirators and care. Madeline Holcombe, CNN CNN

(CNN) The number of patients hospitalized across the US with Covid-19 is the highest it's ever been -- and at this rate health experts warn they may have to ration nurses, respirators and care.

"When you run out of capacity, physicians and bioethicists in these hospitals will need to decide which patients are salvageable -- potentially salvageable

-- and which patients aren't," CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner explained.

The US reported 121,235 patients hospitalized with coronavirus Monday, the highest it has been since the start of the pandemic, according to the Covid Tracking Project. ICU coronavirus patients have increased from 16% in September to 40% last week, and health experts anticipate holiday travel could mean a "surge on top of a surge."

That spike in cases would put Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles in the position of needing to ration care, CEO Dr. Elaine Batchlor said Monday.

"If we continue to see an increase in the number of Covid patients, we may be forced to do something that, as health professionals, we all really just loathe having to even think about," Batchlor told CNN's Brooke Baldwin.

At Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California, nurses that usually care for one or two patients are now caring for three or four, infectious disease specialist Dr. Kimberly Shriner told CNN on Sunday. ...

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