WASHINGTON (Dispatches) - The surge in patients comes as the highly contagious Delta variant continues to spread across the US, and coincided with a weekend that saw a spike in travel.
According to the Transportation Security Administration, more than 3.5 million people travelled across the country on Friday and Saturday for the Labor Day holiday, despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation for unvaccinated people to refrain from traveling.
Hospitalizations and deaths are a lagging indicator of COVID spread, so the impact of people’s travels this week will not be clear right away, but the agency is continuing to advise caution.
“We have actually articulated that people who are fully vaccinated and who are wearing masks can travel,” said Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, last week.
“Although given where we are with disease transmission right now, we would say that people need to take their own – these risks – into their own consideration as they think about traveling,” she added.
This past weekend saw 1.146mln weekly cases, compared with 287,235 last year. Despite the decline in cases in certain states including Florida, other states such as Idaho are seeing hospitals begin to ration healthcare amid patient surges.
Idaho’s State Health Agency cited a “severe shortage of staffing and available beds”, warning residents that they may not get the care they would normally expect if they required hospitalization.
The state’s public health leaders also announced that they activated “crisis standards of care” allowing healthcare rationing for the state’s Northern hospitals due to the overwhelming amount of COVID-19 patients. The move allows hospitals to distribute scant resources such as intensive care unit rooms to patients most likely to survive.