19 States Have Less Than 15% ICU Beds Left Amid Omicron Surge

Empty hospital bed on hospital ward

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Nineteen U.S. states reportedly have scarce amounts of available intensive care unit beds at hospitals amid the ongoing omicron surge and ensuing record COVID-19 cases.

CNN reports Kentucky, Alabama, Indiana and New Hampshire all have less than 10% remaining capacity at ICUs, while Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont are all at less than 15%, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Servics on Wednesday (January 13).

The U.S. is currently at 151,261 total hospitalizations nationwide, which set a new record, as of Wednesday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, said he the extremely contagious omicron variant is likely to infect "just about everybody," but reiterated the importance of the COVID vaccine booster limiting symptoms, in his latest public address on Tuesday (January 11).

"Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody," Dr. Fauci told J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, via CNN. "Those who have been vaccinated ... and boosted would get exposed. Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected but will very likely, with some exceptions, do reasonably well in the sense of not having hospitalization and death."

Dr. Fauci added that unvaccinated patients were expected to "get the brunt of the severe aspect of this" in contrast to those who are vaccinated.

CNN reports at least one in five eligible Americans -- or about 65 million individuals -- aren't vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Wednesday (January 12).

More than 62% of the U.S. population is currently fully vaccinated, however, only 23% are fully vaccinated and also received their COVID-19 booster, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data obtained and shared by CNN.


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