As some hospitals near 90% capacity due to COVID-19, this map can tell you if your local hospital is almost full
The Department of Health and Human Services this week released data on the number of beds available at individual hospitals for the first time, and said it would continue to do so on a weekly basis. Previously, HHS had only released state and national hospital-bed data.
In California, hospital admissions have risen 70% over the last two weeks, leaving fewer than 1,700 intensive-care unit beds available out of 7,800 in the state. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has issued stay-at-home orders in regions where ICU beds fell below 15% capacity.
The U.S. set a record for COVID-19-related hospitalizations this month with more than 100,000 patients, and the number of people with the virus in ICUs has surpassed 20,000, as hospitals await a post-Thanksgiving surge in admissions and brace for more after Christmas and Hanukkah.
A new tool can help people assess the situation in their area. Using the University of Minnesota’s COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project, NPR created a map for people to find out how many COVID-19 hospitalizations there are in their county as a percentage of the total number of beds.
See NPR’s hospital map here.
One note of caution: Science Magazine said there may be discrepancies in the HHS hospital-bed numbers. On Nov. 16, 71% of Wisconsin’s hospital beds were filled, HHS said. “Yet a different federal COVID-19 data system painted a much more dire picture (91%) for the same day,” according to the magazine.
As of Thursday, nearly 69 million people worldwide had contracted COVID-19 and 1.57 million people had died. The U.S. had 15.4 million cases and 289,450 fatalities, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University. Hospitalizations held below 60,000 during the early wave of the pandemic in the spring.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for the past three decades, has said that people should avoid travel this month. “For the first time in more than 30 years, I’m not spending the Christmas holidays with my daughters,” he said.
Fauci had said much the same in October, with Thanksgiving on the horizon, about gathering only on Zoom
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with family, aside from his wife of 35 years. For those who must travel long distances by plane or automobile, here is advice on how to stay safe.
Dispatches From a Pandemic:It’s 2:30 a.m. in Wyoming: ‘You’re holding a smartphone to let a husband say goodbye to his wife via FaceTime after 60 years of marriage’
There has been progress on vaccines. BioNTech SE
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and Pfizer
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said a final analysis of their vaccine candidate showed 95% rather than 90% efficacy. Meanwhile, Moderna
MRNA,
said its vaccine candidate was 94.5% effective.
A vaccine candidate from AstraZeneca
AZN,
and the University of Oxford is safe and effective and showed an average efficacy of 70% in a pooled analysis of interim data, according to a peer-reviewed study published Tuesday.
Efficacy was 62% for trial participants who received two full doses of the experimental vaccine, but increased to 90% among a subgroup of volunteers who received a half dose, then a full dose, according to the full late-stage clinical trial data published in The Lancet.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
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the S&P 500 Index
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and the Nasdaq Composite
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were lower Wednesday, weighed down by the rise in cases across the U.S. Reports of a possible compromise between lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle on a new COVID-19–related stimulus bill, and progress with vaccines have helped stocks make gains in recent weeks.
