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Hospitalizations for COVID-19 are dwindling rapidly in the United States, but a heavy burden remains on the nation’s health facilities, and the nation’s health care workers are exhausted under the strain, according to CNN.
For the first time in over a month, there are less than 100. hospital beds in use for patients with COVID-19 nationwide, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services from USA
That is a drop of the 38% since a few weeks ago, when hospitalizations for Covid reached a peak of more than 100,02 beds in use at the same time.
There is no “magic number”
Despite promising trends, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of Diseases (CDC), says that it is still too early to change the guidance and relax the prevention restrictions of COVID-18.
Hospitalizations are an important barometer, especially at the local level where decisions are made, he said at a Covid Response Team briefing-18 of the White House on Wednesday.
“The cases and hospitalizations are declining. This, of course, is encouraging. And that leads us, of course, to review all of our guidance based on the latest data and science and what we know about the virus,” Walensky said.
“Of course, we are closely monitoring this in real time, and evaluating transmission rates as well as serious hit rates as we update and revise our guidance. But there is no “magic number”, Walensky stressed.
Hospitalizations are still high
Current hospitalizations have now dropped below the peak of the Delta wave and the first winter wave of the Omicron variant , but are still higher than they have been during the vast majority of the coronavirus pandemic.
Overall, approximately 1 in 7 inpatient beds is currently in use due to Covid , and there are about 19,02 patients with COVID-19 in intensive care units across the country, according to HHS data.
And last week, more than a quarter of the nation’s hospitals reported critical staffing shortages.
Plus cases among children
People older than 65 years have consistently accounted for a disproportionate share of Covid hospitalizations, accounting for about 13 % of the US population, but more than 40 % of hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic.
But a growing share of Covid hospitalizations is children. Nearly 6% of all hospitalizations in the last week of January were of children, according to preliminary data from the CDC, a higher proportion than at any other point in the pandemic.
The country’s health authorities remind that all people over 5 years of age are eligible for a COVID-vaccine 19 free and all people over 12 Years are eligible for a free COVID-19 booster.
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been about 4.4 million total hospital admissions for COVID-19, according to data from the CDC. In the first week of February, there were about 13,000 new Covid admissions-19 every day, about one 25% less than the previous week.
United States adds more than 77 million confirmed cases of Covid and more than 911, deaths from the start of the pandemic to date, according to the John Hopkins University database.
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