Hospitals around the country remain filled beyond capacity, threatening the quality of care provided both to coronavirus patients and people suffering other medical emergencies.
Why it matters: We're beginning to see more than 4,000 coronavirus deaths a day, and heart attacks and car accidents are still happening, whether or not the local hospital has any room left.
- Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Delaware, South Carolina and Virginia are currently experiencing record hospitalizations.
- Some patients' conditions will likely worsen without timely medical care.
Zoom in: Officials in Los Angeles County, where beds have been set up in hallways and patients wait hours in ambulances to be admitted to the emergency room, per the L.A. Times , said yesterday that hospitals likely haven't seen the effects of the end of the holiday season.
- Hospitals in Southern Nevada are filling up, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports, with one Las Vegas hospital issuing a disaster declaration recently — which is a "very fancy way of saying rationing care," said Joe Corcoran, chief medical officer overseeing HCA Healthcare hospitals in Nevada and California.
The bottom line: Vaccines may be the dominant story in the news right now, but the situation on the ground is still dire.