Severe coronavirus cases on pace to overwhelm ICU availability in urban and rural areas - KY3

(InvestigateTV) - Far from a big city, Cleburne County Arkansas is a coronavirus hotspot, where 24 out of every 10,000 residents has COVID-19.

InvestigateTV compares COVID-19 cases with ICU beds in counties and hospital regions. (Source: Gray News)

Its infection rate is among the highest in the U.S.

It’s also a county without a single ICU bed.

For residents in five northern Mississippi counties, the nearest ICU bed is in Memphis, Tennessee. Two weeks ago, those counties didn’t have any coronavirus cases. Now there are 71.

In Colorado’s Eagle County, ill patients are straining its limited hospital resources. It has five ICU beds and a growing outbreak with more than 41 coronavirus cases for every 10,000 residents.

As cases mount across the country, millions of Americans live in areas with too few intensive care beds to meet the potential demand of a deadly virus, InvestigateTV has found.

Take, for example, the current situations in Arkansas, Ohio and Oregon - three states that fully disclose the number of COVID-19 patients who are hospitalized. About a third of hospitalized patients in those states are in the ICU.

InvestigateTV analyzed hospital bed data and COVID-19 county-level case data compiled by Kaiser Health News and Johns Hopkins University, respectively, and identified dozens of places where the demand for treatment could far outpace the supply.

Critically ill COVID-19 patients put unusual stress on the ICU system because they can require stays of up to 21 days. The average stay in intensive care for all other patients is about three days, experts have said.

“I am very concerned right now,” said Dr. Janis Orlowski, chief health care officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges. “This potentially will overrun our healthcare capacities.”

For 25 states, including Michigan, New York and Washington – states with surging cases – the lack of hospital beds can be partly blamed on state laws that heavily regulate how facilities expand.

Without these decades’ old regulations, “we would have more beds and more supply in order to help critically ill patients,” said Thomas Stratmann, a professor of economics and law at George Mason University.

And the strain is coming. In Mississippi, Oklahoma, Ohio and Maryland, more than a quarter of their COVID-19 patients were in the hospital on April 1.

None have been on the radar as virus hotspots.

Analysis exposes potential weak spots in critical care availability

Pockets of the country are more likely to run out of ICU beds than others if their positive cases keep pace, according to InvestigateTV’s data map analysis.

The Santa Cruz, California area has the fewest ICU beds compared to its population. It has about 10 beds per 100,000 adults in its hospital region, a measurement often used in healthcare research that groups areas together where people are most likely to use medical services in the area.

Analysis of the hospital regions and their available ICU beds published by Harvard University’s Global Institute reveal other regions where the bed-to-adult ratio is potentially problematic if there are many severe cases in the area:

-- Fort Collins, Colorado: 11 ICU beds per 100,000 people
-- Traverse City, Michigan: 14 ICU beds
-- Dubuque, Iowa: 14 ICU beds
-- Everett, Washington: 15 ICU beds
-- Wichita Falls, Texas: 16 beds

Collectively, those five regions serve 1.3 million people.

Hospital regions with the most ICU beds, and thereby capabilities to handle severe COVID-19 cases, are in Slidell, Louisiana (137 ICU beds); Duluth, Minnesota (217 ICU beds), and Florence, South Carolina 224 beds).

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Severe coronavirus cases on pace to overwhelm ICU availability in urban and rural areas - KY3
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