According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) statistics, amid a surge in the number of hospitalized patients with Coronavirus amid the spread of highly contagious Omicron variant, the virus is downgrading a worrying number of frontline healthcare workers, with over twenty-five percent of hospitalizations in eighteen states reporting they are struggling with severe shortages of medical workers, doctors, and nurses as of Saturday.
Amid a growing number of COVID-19 hospitalized patients due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, over 25% of hospitals in eighteen states reported that they are struggling with severe shortages of medical staff. pic.twitter.com/DxGr2Gx2ZE
— Live News Now (@LiveNewsNow6) January 10, 2022
Approximately fifty-nine percent of hospitals in Vermont are reporting critical health care staffing shortages. The highest proportion in the country is around six percentage points from 25th December and three times the countrywide average of 19.3 percent. Vermont hospitals rely on traveling nurses to cover the staff shortage, which costs the state $75 million in 2021, while several residents travel to neighboring states to receive care.
Additionally, New Mexico remained the second most affected state of the country, with forty-eight percent of hospitals are reporting critical staffing absences, less four percentage points from two weeks ago. The president of the New Mexico Hospital Association, troy Clark, told KOB4 he expects the staff shortage to be worse when factoring in travel nurses and that staff members are resigning due to fatigue.
Seven States with Critical Staffing Shortages
Third-worst affected state is Rhode Island, where forty-seven percent of hospitals report critical staff shortages, followed By West Virginia at forty percent. In addition, there are seven states with staffing shortages in around over a third of their hospitals:
- Massachusetts 30%
- North Dakota 31%
- Wisconsin 32%
- Arizona 33%
- Kentucky 33%
- Oklahoma 33%
- California 35%
On Saturday, about one hundred thirty-eight thousand patients were hospitalized with Coronavirus, up about sixty-eight percent from the seven-day average of 81837 the previous week, approaching the record one hundred forty-two thousand set on 14th January 2021.
Pandemic Clouds Future in 2022
At the start of this year, most measures show the United States economy is growing, with an unemployment rate looming at record lows and demand for goods that has rising imports from the rest of the world. On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department announced that the redundancy rate had dropped to 3.9 percent in December, even as the economy produced a smaller than expected surge of 199000 new jobs.
Source: Web
Furthermore, the report came one day after the U.S. Commerce Department that American imports in November of last month had risen by 4.6 percent over the previous month of $304.4 billion. The growing imports level contributed to a trade shortfall of $80.2 billion for the month, close to the record of $181.4 billion set in September.
The Department of Labor released a monthly jobs report Friday, which said that the country’s economy continues to show a notable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic collapse. In addition, the 199,000 figure for the 2021 last month was lower than anticipated but contributed to an average of around 530000 jobs per month over all of last year. In addition, the redundancy rate dropped from 6.4 percent at the starting of the year to 3.9 percent in December.
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