Tough choices loom about who gets an ICU bed, Dr. Fauci warns

Washington, Sep 7 (Prensa Latina) Some hospitals in the United States are close to full capacity as Covid-19 continues to spread nationwide, and soon officials could be making choices about who gets an ICU bed, warned Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases.

September 7, 2021
07:30

‘We are perilously close,’ he said. ‘You’re going to be in a situation where you’re going to have to make some very tough choices.’

Dr. Fauci told CNN´s Jim Acosta that the best way to prevent health care workers from having to make those tough choices is to ‘pull out all the stops on everything we can do to prevent new infections.’

Masking is important, Dr. Fauci noted, but ‘vaccination is the number one’ method of lowering hospitalizations.

Across the US, 79.83% of ICU beds are in use — almost a third of which are occupied by Covid-19 patients, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. Eight states had more than 90% of their adult ICU beds occupied Sunday: Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Nevada and Kentucky

President Joe Biden had planned to roll out booster doses for Pfizer and Moderna at the same time, but Dr. Fauci told CNN that may not happen.

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