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Oregon and Idaho are running out of I.C.U. beds as Covid cases hit records.

Amid a Delta-driven surge in the U.S., most states have less than 30 percent of their intensive-care beds still available.

Ann Enderle, a registered nurse, treating a Covid patient at St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center in Idaho last week.Credit...Kyle Green/Associated Press

Oregon and Idaho have joined the list of U.S. states that are running out of I.C.U. beds as both confront a significant rise in new coronavirus infections.

Patrick Allen, the director of the Oregon Health Authority, said in an interview on Saturday that only 50 of the state’s 638 I.C.U. beds were still available. Gov. Brad Little of Idaho, a Republican, said in a statement last week that just four of the state’s nearly 400 beds were still open.

Covid patients in hospitals and I.C.U.s
Early data may be incomplete.
Mar. 2020
Oct.
May 2021
Dec.
Jul. 2022
Feb. 2023
500
1,000 hospitalized
Hospitalized
In I.C.U.s
0
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The seven-day average is the average of a day and the previous six days of data. Currently hospitalized is the most recent number of patients with Covid-19 reported by hospitals in the state for the four days prior. Dips and spikes could be due to inconsistent reporting by hospitals. Hospitalization numbers early in the pandemic are undercounts due to incomplete reporting by hospitals to the federal government.
Covid patients in hospitals and I.C.U.s
Early data may be incomplete.
Apr. 2020
Oct.
Apr. 2021
Oct.
Apr. 2022
Oct.
200
400
600 hospitalized
Hospitalized
In I.C.U.s
0
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The seven-day average is the average of a day and the previous six days of data. Currently hospitalized is the most recent number of patients with Covid-19 reported by hospitals in the state for the four days prior. Dips and spikes could be due to inconsistent reporting by hospitals. Hospitalization numbers early in the pandemic are undercounts due to incomplete reporting by hospitals to the federal government.

The national Delta-driven surge has filled hospitals in many states. Only a handful have more than 30 percent of their overall I.C.U. beds still available, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, and many have less.

I.C.U.s are equipped with specialized equipment and trained staff who can treat critically ill patients. Experts say maintaining existing standards of care for the sickest patients may be difficult or impossible at hospitals with more than 95 percent I.C.U. occupancy, and throughout the pandemic, hospitals have been forced to improvise solutions when I.C.U. space and staffing have dwindled.

Mr. Little and Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon, a Democrat, each mobilized members of their state’s National Guard last month to add extra hospital staff.

“We are dangerously close to activating statewide crisis standards of care,” Mr. Little said in his statement. “In essence, someone would have to decide who can be treated and who cannot.”

Mr. Little’s state is grappling with its highest surge in Covid-19 hospitalizations to date. Idaho had a seven-day average of 512 hospitalizations on Friday, a number that has grown rapidly since July, according to a New York Times database.

In a presentation last Wednesday, Mr. Little said that hospitals had had to convert other spaces into I.C.U.s to accommodate more patients, and that “those are filling up, too.” His state’s health care system, he said, was not designed to withstand “an unrestrained global pandemic.”

At the end of the presentation, the governor pleaded with people to get vaccinated — the vast majority of Idahoans in intensive care are unvaccinated, he said — adding, “I wish everyone could have seen what I saw in the I.C.U. last night.”

In Oregon, the seven-day average of hospitalizations hit 1,219 on Friday, almost double the previous high reached in December.

The dire numbers don’t do justice to the mounting crisis that is overwhelming hospitals and health care workers in both states, officials said. Mr. Little said that even as hospitals made room for extra I.C.U. beds, they filled up — fast.

Demand for beds in Oregon is also exceeding supply. Mr. Allen, the Oregon health official, said that 127 patients in the state were waiting in emergency departments for beds to open up, though not every hospital in the state reports that figure. He said hospitals in southern Oregon, where vaccination rates were lowest, were especially hard hit.

“We’re on the edge of what we can manage right now,” he said, looking ahead to next week, when children would be returning to school in the most populous parts of the state. “There is not much room for things to get a lot worse.”

Adeel Hassan and Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.

Alyssa Lukpat is a reporter covering breaking news for the Express desk. She is also a member of the 2021-22 New York Times fellowship class. More about Alyssa Lukpat

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