Covid progress threatens basic services in the United States | world and science

Photo of the Omicron variant released by Russian scientists
Photo: Jalamiah Institute / Disclosure

Published on 09/01/2022 12:22 PM

US – The current explosion of Omicron-fueled coronavirus infection in the US has led to the collapse of essential services, in clear evidence that Covid-19 continues to change lives even two years into the pandemic. On Friday, the country recorded 894,490 injuries, reaching 59.4 million injuries, with 835,000 deaths.

“It really reminds us of the beginning of the pandemic, when there was great disruption in every part of our lives,” said Tom Cotter, project manager for HOPE – an international healthcare organization founded in the United States in 1958. The truth is that there is no way to predict what will happen next until we increase vaccination numbers around the world.”

First responders, hospitals, schools and public offices have managed to keep their business, albeit precariously, but no one knows for how long.

Hospitals

In Johnson County, Kansas, paramedics work 80 hours a week. Ambulances are often forced to change course when they are told the unit is full, confusing relatives who were already heading to a particular place. When the vehicles arrive at the new destination, patients who were supposed to go straight to the emergency room end up in waiting rooms because there are no beds.

Medical facilities have taken a “double whammy,” said Steve Stites, MD, medical director at the University of Kansas Hospital. The number of covid19 patients in his unit rose from 40 on Dec. 1 to 139 on Friday, with 75,000 hospital workers.

“My hope, and let’s cross our fingers, is that with the peak of cases, there will be the same rapid decline that we saw in South Africa,” Stites said. “But we don’t know that. It’s just a hypothesis.”

safety

Examples spread across the United States. And in Los Angeles, at least 800 police and firefighters were turned away due to the virus on Thursday, 6th, delaying the incident response.

In New York City, officials have been forced to limit garbage collection and change subway traffic due to a stampede of employees due to the virus.

The capital’s transportation authority said about a fifth of metro and conductor operators (about 1,300 workers) had not turned up for service in recent days. Nearly a quarter of the city’s sanitation department employees were also sick Thursday, Edward Grayson, the department’s director, said. “Everyone works 24 hours a day,” Grayson said.

education

Meanwhile, schools across the country are trying to maintain face-to-face teaching despite the massive shortage of teachers. In Chicago, an impasse between the school board and the teachers’ union over the return of face-to-face teaching and safety protocols to maintain it led to classes being canceled in the last three days of last week. In San Francisco, nearly 900 education professionals were laid off on Thursday the sixth.