The news is leaving out a very important tidbit of information.
Atlanta has 1600 ICU beds. There's only 1097 confirmed COVID-19 infections in the whole state of Georgia (and I can't seem to find any information on how many confirmed cases in Atlanta, how convenient). Why is Atlanta's ICU at capacity? Influenza is a big role.
2020 is a very bad year for influenza. In the USA, we've had over 710,000 hospitalizations and 59,000 deaths from influenza from Oct 1st to March 14th. In Atlanta, reported flu cases are up 300% over normal. That's right, almost 3 times more people have died from the flu in the USA than people that have died from COVID-19, worldwide, in the same time span. What.
Source:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
https://dph.georgia.gov/document/flu-report/week-11-march-8-2020-march-14-2020/download
Edit:
According to the CDC, only 2.86% of COVID-19 infections have required ICU. So let's pretend Atlanta has the only ICU beds in the entire state of Georgia and all ICU COVID-19 patients are in Atlanta.
That would only account for 32 out of 1600 beds being used for COVID-19.
Atlanta has a HUGE CHF, Cardiac, Dialysis community which really suck up beds like a vaccum. Not to mention: Homeless septic patients, COPD pts, Trauma pts, basic city sick people. If there are only 600 ICU beds left to treat the everyday dead and dieing in ATL.....yeah, that's a problem. Most of those beds are filled with routine cases daily.....so if you remove 1000 beds from the pool.....not good. Not to mention.....we are still in the flu season. As a nurse in GA, I can tell you, we send our sickest to ATL...that sucks up beds. Also....some, not all, some rural regions are SLAMMED! Albany, Carrolton....it makes no sense how they are hit more than Columbus GA (Ft Benning) or PTC (bedroom community of ATL) or Athens (UGA). Exponentially, as rural hospitals get filled, they turf their sick to ATL. ATL is a drain for GA......and the rural hospitals have a very low threshhold for being overwhelmed. They have hundreds of employees, not thousands.
Thanks for the context, it makes sense. It also looks like you typed that on your phone on your break, haha.
Keep up the good work, nurse!
We'll get it done!!!!! But...it's a learning curve. Hell, everyday another member of our staff gets quarantined......we'll either bail out the ship or go down for lack of people to bail.
That's 1000 in the whole state. Atlanta isn't a state and all 1000 reported cases only a tiny percent of those require ICU.
You literally just posted 1600 for ATL "Atlanta has 1600 ICU beds".....you. ATL has the most "empty beds" meaning....most rural hospitals have a handful of ICU beds....ATL has hundreds of them. Most rural beds are filled......and the staff isn't equipped to handle tougher cases...routine is to send them ATL. So, you suck up ATL beds....that's a problem for ALL of GA.
According to the CDC, only 2.86% of COVID-19 infections have required ICU. So let's pretend Atlanta has the only ICU beds in the entire state of Georgia and all ICU COVID-19 patients are in Atlanta.
That would only account for 32 out of 1600 ICU beds being used for COVID-19. So who's using the other 1568?
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm
YOU posted the numbers...don't use me to walk YOUR numbers back. Maybe you just spoke without thinking. Maybe just rethink this.
I think you took too many marijuana pills this morning.
Yes, Atlanta has 1600 ICU beds. Atlanta is reporting their ICU beds are at capacity, meaning 1600 of 1600 are occupied.
Only 32 of those 1600 are occupied by COVID-19 patients, if all COVID-19 cases in the state of Georgia are in Atlanta. Since not all COVID-19 ICU cases are in Atlanta, there's probably less than 20 COVID-19 cases occupying Atlanta's ICU beds.
So who's using the other 1580 ICU beds? Not coronavirus patients. That's what the media is leaving out because they want to make clickbait headlines that sound scary.
I think you smoked too much and can't see in 3D. On any given day, without Kung Flu, I may have to wait 48 hours to send a pt from my rural GA hospital to ATL for a "higher level of care". So, times that, on a given day by 10 to include other rural hospials. There is a backlog. NOW...with the Virus....I can assure you, more than 32 ICU beds state wide are filled with Kung Flu pts in the state of GA. I don't know where you got that...but it is incorrect. There are that many in my RURAL area alone...and we are not hard hit. So, the problem is that the Corona Virus patients are disrupting the normal flow of the routine backlog of critical care patients. And, the Corona Virus patients aren't like normal cardiac, COPD , DK, Dialysis, OD pts in the ICU....meaning,we can handle multiples of them. But when you get multiple Kung Flu pts, the treatment changes, the isolation changes. They are labor intensive in an already labor intensive scenario. Shit gets fucked exponentially!!!! But you don't really care....you're like a hospital administrator asking why we can't do more with less, why can't we work without masks, why can't we just make do with surgical masks instead of N95s, why do we assho!e nurses keep annoying you with the facts. I know.....we should all just die for the cause. The cause being YOUR bonus. I know. If nurses would JUST QUIT complaining....this would all be so much easier....because in 6 months there will be a bunch of new grads for you to kill who won' ask inconvenient questions. I know.
The CDC. I've already cited the source. It's correct.
We will see these claims repeated exponentially at hospitals and cities throughout the US.
Doubt it. It's a very severe year for influenza but it's on the downturn. COVID-19 only makes for a tiny percentage of hospitalizations, probably less than 1% nationwide.
Do you want to respond to your ATL bed stats? You just shit all over ATL.....wanna walk it back? ATL is at capacity because of the numbers hospitalised and the numbers being turfed to them from rural hospitals.due to severity.