Coronavirus patients swamp emergency rooms in some US states

A fast-rising rising tide of new coronavirus cases is flooding emergency rooms in parts of United States, with some patients moved into hallways and nurses working extra shifts to keep up with surge.

Patients struggling to brea are being placed on ventilators in emergency wards since intensive care units are full, officials say, and near-constant care y require is overtaxing workers who also are treating more typical ER cases like chest pains, infections, and fractures.

In Texas, Dr. Alison Hdock of Baylor College of Medicine said current situation is worse than after Hurricane Harvey, which swamped Houston with floodwaters in 2017. state reported a new daily record for virus deaths Friday and more than 10,000 confirmed cases for fourth consecutive day.

“I’ve never seen anything like this COVID surge,” said Hdock, who has worked in emergency rooms since 2007. “We’re doing our best, but we’re t an ICU.”

Patients are waiting “hours and hours” to get mitted, she said, and least sick people are lying in beds in halls to make room for most seriously ill.

Around Seattle, which was nation's first hot spot for virus that causes COVID-19 , a new wave of patients is showing up at emergency departments, said nurse Mike Hastings.

“What’s really frustrating from my side of it is when a patient comes into emergency department, and is t really having symptoms of COVID, but y feel like y need that testing,” said Hastings, who works at an area hospital and is president of Emergency Nurses Association. “Sometimes we’re t able to test m because we don’t have eugh test supplies, so we’re only testing a certain set of patients."

Confirmed coronavirus cases around world have topped 14 million and deaths have surpassed 600,000, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. true toll is thought to be higher, in part because of shorts in testing. United States, Brazil and India top list with highest number of cases.

It's difficult to get a complete picture of how U.S. emergency rooms are faring. In Arizona, one of few states that reports data on visits to emergency room by people with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 symptoms, numbers started to spike in early June and peaked earlier this month. More than 2,000 people went to an ER with coronavirus symptoms on a single day, July 7.

Dr. Robert Hancock, who works at multiple hospitals in Texas and Oklahoma and serves as president of Texas College of Emergency Physicians, said some Texas emergency rooms are facing backups of patients awaiting ICU beds. And many of m are on ventilators, meaning y require more attention than or patients.

"Unfortunately, because of increased demand for personnel, re typically isn’t anybody free to come down to ER to help a lot of times from a nursing standpoint,” he said.

Burut could await se health workers, as it did some in New York City, when it was epicenter of nation's outbreak in spring.

Emergency rooms doctors and nurses were caught off guard by relentless stream of severely sick patients during shifts that often lasted 12 hours, said Dr. Bernard P. Chang of New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center.

“You were on high alert whole shift,” Chang said. “It was a brutal, sustained battle.”