The coronavirus has been detrimental this year, causing many to be taken into the ICU to be put on a ventilator. Many hospitals are running out of ICU beds but fortunately it seems they recover from the shortage a few days later. The situation is only expected to worsen because of the cases expected from the holidays. 

During the winter, hospitals see a lot of road crashes, skiing accidents, influenza, cardiac, and other health issues caused, in part, by people overdoing it during the holidays. Also, the low humidity in the winter causes viruses to live longer indoors, and due to people spending more time inside it significantly increasing the spread of viruses. 

Since hospitals see quite a few people during the winter, ICU beds are always being used but the coronavirus just makes it ten times worse. Because coronavirus patients are taking up much of the beds, hospitals may not be able to provide intensive care beds to patients with non-Covid emergencies.

How are other states doing?

Oregon is among the many states struggling right now. A spokesperson for a hospital in Oregon said that they were lucky enough to not have to transfer patients out of their hospital to other hospitals due to overcrowding. In their hospital out of 30 ICU beds available only three patients had Covid. In Oregon there are 300 beds statewide but 142 were available. However, some cities in Oregon did run out of ICU beds forcing other patients to different hospitals. ICU bed shortages have been happening all throughout the United States but some states are definitely worse than others. 

California is almost at its bed capacity as it descended towards zero in mid December. The region’s ICU bed capacity dropped to 1.7% in December and continues to decline. Los Angeles county had 4,404 people in hospitals with Covid, which is an 300% increase over the past month, 21% which were in the ICU. But California is problem solving and they currently have many beds coming there just in case they don’t have any more room in normal hospital beds. 

What’s Colorado doing?

As for Colorado, we are having a shortage but recently several ICU beds were delivered to local hospitals. Later that same day, two more trucks came filled with beds, bringing a total of 30 beds. The hospital company UCHealth, has executed extraordinary preparations in order to take care of covid and non-covid patients. UCHealth has 411 people hospitalized, bringing up the total from the spring significantly. Based on the hospital’s prediction, they expect the rates to double over the next couple of weeks due to the holidays. Bigger hospitals have also been converting parts of their hospital into covid rooms. 

At Memorial Hospital General, they have been removing windows in patient rooms to convert them into covid rooms. Chief operating officer at Memorial, Merle Taylor said in an interview, 

“What our facilities crews have done is they’ve removed the smaller windows. In order to ensure safe airflow in rooms where COVID-19 positive patients are being cared for, we removed windows and added a machine that filters the air and removes it through the new openings. This helps to increase air recycling, keeping the room at negative air pressure, which minimizes exposure to staff and visitors.”

But if ICU beds do run out, there are many alternate care sites, one of which is the Colorado Convention center. The hospital beds inside them have been empty for months waiting for a surge in cases. Currently the Colorado Office of Emergency Management is working on a contract extension to keep the convention center available to the end of march. Mike Willis, Director of the Emergency Management Office and leader of coronavirus preparedness stated, “An alternate care site is the care of last resort.” If we do have to go to one of those sites it will take about 14 days to get it set up mainly due to staffing reasons. Currently, Colorado is having a major staffing issue due to healthcare workers being out with covid or being around someone who was infected. But, the newly released vaccine should decline cases of covid freeing up some space in the ICU for critical patients. 

In the past couple of weeks, the cases have been declining but we are starting to see them go up again. Covid-19 is constantly changing, so as of now the future is unknown in what will happen in the upcoming months.