Emergency rooms are flooded due to virus outbreaks in some US states – WATE 6 On Your Side

The surge of new coronavirus cases has flooded emergency rooms in parts of the United States, some patients have moved into corridors, and nurses are working extra shifts to catch up with surges ..

Authorities say that patients who are suffering from dyspnea are placed on a ventilator in an emergency ward because the intensive care unit is full, and the almost constant treatment they need is for chest pain, infections, fractures, and other More typical endoplasmic reticulum cases are also burdening workers who are being treated.

In Texas, Dr. Alison Haddock of Baylor College of Medicine said the current situation is worse than after the Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston in 2017. 4 consecutive days.

“I’ve never seen anything like this COVID surge,” said Haddock, who has been working in the emergency room since 2007. “We do our best, but we are not ICUs.”

Patients wait “hours” before being hospitalized, she said, and the least ill are lying in corridor beds to make room for the most serious illnesses.

According to nurse Mike Hastings, a new wave of patients is emerging in the emergency department around Seattle, the first hotspot in the US for the virus that causes COVID-19.

“I’m really frustrated from my side when the patient comes to the emergency department and doesn’t really have COVID symptoms, but feels they need a test,” he said. And Hastings, the president of the Emergency Nurses Association, said. “Only certain patients will be tested, as it may not be possible due to insufficient test supplies.”

In another state, Florida, where the number of cases is skyrocketing, lemdecivir, a drug shown to reduce average hospital stays, is urgently needed to treat bed-filling coronavirus patients Said the hospital.

In response, Governor Rondesantis announced that 30,000 vials of drug would be shipped to the state in sufficient quantities to treat approximately 5,000 patients.

On Saturday, Florida reported more than 10,200 new cases of the virus and 90 additional deaths, and Missouri recorded 958 new cases of pandemic highs in one day. Arizona, which regularly reviews mortality certificates, reclassified 106 deaths as due to COVID-19, resulting in 147 deaths reported on Saturday.

According to the Johns Hopkins University, more than 14 million cases of coronavirus have been confirmed worldwide and more than 600,000 deaths have been confirmed worldwide. On Saturday, the World Health Organization, also tracking the virus, reported a daily record of new infections-more than 259,000 worldwide-for the second consecutive day. The true cost of a pandemic is believed to be higher due to lack of testing and flaws in data collection.

The United States, Brazil, and India have the highest number of cases, and in South Africa, more than 350,000 cases, which is about half of all confirmed infections in Africa, were in the top five this weekend.

In the United States, where many infections in Sanbelt are in rapid rise, Megan Yen, an associate professor of epidemiology at Arizona State University in Tempe, may show that the virus is spreading more rapidly. Said it was important to monitor emergency room visits.

However, in many places it is difficult to get a complete picture of the emergency room situation. Arizona, one of the few states reporting data on emergency room visits by people with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 symptoms, surged in early June and peaked earlier this month. Over 2,000 people went to the ER with coronavirus on the 1st of July 7th.

On Friday, Arizona’s COVID-19-related hospitalizations fell below recent records set after the state became a national hotspot.

Dr. Robert Hancock, who works at multiple hospitals in Texas and Oklahoma and is president of the Texas Medical School of Emergency Medicine, said several Texas emergency rooms face back-ups for patients waiting for an ICU bed. Told. And many of them use ventilators, so they’re more tricky than other patients.

“Unfortunately, because of the increasing demand for personnel, from a nursing perspective, it is often impossible to come down to a paramedic,” he said.

Burnout could wait for these health workers, as in New York City, the epicenter of the New York spring epidemic.

Dr Bernard P. Chan of the New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center said the merciless stream of critically ill patients was alert to the emergency room doctors and nurses during the 12-hour shift.

“You paid great attention to the entire shift,” Chan said. “It was a brutal and lasting battle.”

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Associated Press correspondents, Kevin McGill of New Orleans, Jonathan J. Cooper of Phoenix, and Carla K. Johnson of Seattle, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP Pandemic Coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.