March 18, 2021

Lessons From The COVID-19 Crisis: Overcrowding Hospitals Cost Lives-NPR

Health care systems endured a stress test like no other over the past year as COVID-19 patients filled up hospital beds and intensive care units. Health care workers pleaded with the public to "flatten the curve" yet each surge in 2020 was worse than the next. Now two recent studies quantify the consequences of flooding hospitals with COVID-19 patients, and add urgency to continued efforts to keep cases and hospitalizations down. The research, from both the U.S. and the U.K., shows that when ICUs fill up, COVID-19 patients' chances of dying from the disease rise dramatically, and this is despite improvements in treatment and care developed since last spring. NPR, 03/18/2021