Hospitals across the U.S. felt the anger of the omicron variant and were caught in a chaos different from the early COVID-19 surge.

This time, they are dealing with a serious shortage of personnel because many medical staff are sick due to this rapidly spreading variant. People appear in large numbers in emergency rooms hoping to be tested for COVID-19, which puts more pressure on the system. Surprisingly, during the hospitalization for other reasons, a considerable number of patients (in some places two-thirds) tested positive for the virus.

At the same time, the hospital stated that the condition of these patients was not as serious as the patients who came in during the last surge. There are not so many people in the intensive care unit, and there is no need for as many ventilators as before.

Pressure continues to prompt hospitals to reduce non-emergency operations and close wards, and the National Guard has been sent to multiple states to provide assistance at medical centers and testing points.

Nearly two years after the pandemic, medical staff felt depressed and exhausted.

“It becomes very tiring, and it is polite to say that,” said Dr. Robert Glasgow of the University of Utah Health University, where hundreds of workers are sick or quarantined.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 85,000 Americans were hospitalized due to COVID-19, which is only worse than the peak increase of approximately 94,000 in early September. Last January, the historical high during the pandemic was approximately 125,000.

But the number of hospitalizations does not tell the whole story. At least some of the official cases involved mild or asymptomatic infections, and these infections were not the reason the patients were sent to the hospital in the first place.

Dr. Fritz François, director of operations at NYU Langone Health Hospital in New York City, said that about 65% of patients who recently entered the system due to COVID-19 were hospitalized for other reasons and accidentally found to be infected with the virus.

Joanne Spetz, deputy director of research at the University of California San Francisco Center for Hygiene, said the increase in the number of such cases is both good and bad.

She said there are no symptoms to indicate that vaccines, boosters, and natural immunity from previous infections are working. The bad news is that these numbers mean that the coronavirus is spreading rapidly, and a certain percentage of them will eventually need to be hospitalized.

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This week, 36% of hospitals in California reported severe staff shortages. 40% of people expect such a shortage.

Kiyomi Burchill, vice president of policy and head of pandemic affairs for the California Hospital Association, said that some hospitals have reported as many as a quarter of their employees leaving due to virus-related reasons.

In response, the hospital is turning to temporary staffing agencies or transferring patients out.

The University of Utah Health Center plans to open more than 50 beds because it does not have enough nurses. It is also rescheduling non-urgent operations. In Florida, a hospital temporarily closed the delivery room due to a shortage of staff.

As of Monday, more than 10,000 people have been infected with COVID-19 in New York State hospitals, including 5,500 in New York City. This is the most in the city or state since the catastrophic spring of 2020.

However, New York City hospital officials reported that things have not become dire. In general, the patient is not as serious as before. Of the patients hospitalized in New York City, approximately 600 are in ICU beds, only slightly more than the number of beds in the intensive care unit on this date last winter.

“We are not even half as of April 2020,” said Dr. David Battinelli, the attending physician at Northwell Health, the largest hospital system in New York State.

At a time when the demand for COVID-19 testing across the United States surged by omicron, the New York City Fire Department asked people not to call an ambulance just because they could not find a test.

In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine announced new or expanded testing sites in nine cities to move test takers from emergency rooms. About 300 members of the National Guard were sent to these centers to help.

In Connecticut, Sherri Dayton, a nurse at the Bucks Plainfield Emergency Center, said that in Connecticut, many emergency room patients lie on overflow beds in the corridors, and due to staff shortages, nurses often work in double shifts. Work. She said the waiting time in many emergency rooms is as long as several hours.

“We are drowning. We are exhausted,” Dayton said.

Although COVID-19 cases are being recorded day after day, doctors and nurses complain about their exhaustion and feel that their neighbors no longer see the pandemic as a crisis.

“In the past, we didn’t have a vaccine, so it was all of us working together and fully supporting it. But this support has diminished from the community, and people seem to move on without us,” said Rachel Chamberlin , A 26-year-old nurse at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire.

Edward Merrens, chief clinical officer of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health, said that more than 85% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are not vaccinated.

Several COVID-19 patients in the COVID-19 ICU ward of the hospital were using a ventilator with a breathing tube stuck in their throat. In one room, the staff prepared for their last family visit, which they feared would be the dying patient.

One of the unvaccinated was 55-year-old Fred Rutherford from Claremont, New Hampshire. When his son was ill, he took him out of the house and took him to the hospital, where he needed a breathing tube for a while and was worried that he might die.

He said that if he went home, he promised to get vaccinated and told others to do the same.

“I may think I am immortal, I am strong,” Rutherford said, speaking by the window in the hospital bed, his voice trembling weak and weak.

But he added: “I will do my best to speak out for those who do not understand that you must be vaccinated. You must complete it to protect each other.”