Prognosis

Hospitals Pushed to Brink as Delta Sparks Hunt for More Staff

  • Hundreds of ventilators sent to Florida from federal stockpile
  • Hawaii spent $46 million on hospital workers for eight weeks
A nurse checks on a patient in the Covid-19 ICU ward at a hospital in Jonesboro, Arkansas, this month.Photographer: Houston Cofield/Bloomberg
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U.S. hospitals are desperately hunting for medical staff as the Covid-19 wave that’s pushing some systems to their breaking point in the South spills into the rest of the country.

More than a dozen states face severe shortages of personnel, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data show. In Texas and Hawaii, hospitals are building tents for extra space. In Florida, the federal government has deployed hundreds of ventilators to Florida in a rare tapping of the Strategic National Stockpile for that equipment.