March 17, 2020

US hospitals are struggling to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/17/21183263/coronavirus-us-hospitals-elective-surgeries-icu-masks
"The coronavirus surge is coming, America’s hospitals are struggling to prepare, and the eventual demand for intensive care unit beds for Covid-19 cases could far exceed what US hospitals will be able to provide. Researchers at the Imperial College London wrote in a devastating new analysis that even stringent mitigation measures of case isolation, home quarantine, and social distancing “would still result in an 8-fold higher peak demand on critical care beds over and above the available surge capacity in ... the US.” America’s hospitals do not appear ready. Tom Frieden, former CDC director under President Barack Obama, told me that in “any place there is community transmission,” hospitals should cancel elective surgeries so they can make more beds available to Covid-19 patients. Surgeon General Jerome Adams has made a similar plea."