With "Omi Keron" raging across the United States, the United States has recently seen a surge in new diagnoses in a single day. According to Worldometer's real-time statistics, as of about 6:30 on January 4, 2022, Beijing time, a total of 57,799,706 confirmed cases of new coronary pneumonia in the United States, and a total of 850,772 deaths. Compared with the data at 6:30 the previous day, there were 1,131,361 new confirmed cases and 2,853 new deaths in the United States.
And this result is indispensable for Omi Keron to "make the difference." The Omi Keron mutant virus seems to spread more easily than previous mutations. The US Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on the 4th that as of January 1, this variant is estimated to account for 95.4% of confirmed cases in the United States.
U.S. cases are rising sharply
Now, the nation is afraid of recurring the "nightmare" of a medical run. According to The New York Times, the "more infectious but obviously milder" variant of "Omi Keron" caused a sharp increase in the number of cases in a short period of time, and a considerable number of people belonged to high-risk groups or were not vaccinated. Hospitals And the ICU is overcrowded.
According to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in today’s U.S., a quarter of the 713 hospitals with ICUs have an ICU occupancy rate of more than 95%. 77%.
The chart produced by the "New York Times" shows that there are more than 40 hospitals in the United States wher the ICU is overloaded, and the ICU occupancy rate of a hospital in Washington, DC is as high as 166%. Among them, the ICU occupancy rate of New York Hospital reached 72%, with the highest rate of 102%.
Therefore, the US Department of Health and Human Services expects the data to be released on January 10, the real situation may become clearer.
The U.S. is in deep crisis of healthcare shortage
In addition to overloading the ICU, the United States is also in a crisis of shortage of medical care.
A few days ago, the "Washington Post" pointed out that in this two-year-long war against the pandemic of the new crown, "we are lacking from beginning to end". Now, under the impact of the new strain of Omi Keron, Medical staff are becoming exhausted, and the US medical system is facing a serious labor shortage.
Rochelle Varensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said, “During past epidemics, we have witnessed a shortage of ventilators and hemodialysis machines, as well as a shortage of ICU wards. When Mikron strikes, what we are really short of is the medical staff themselves."
The British "Guardian" once reported that a survey report showed that 55% of front-line medical staff in the United States are exhausted and they often face harassment or frustration at work. The American Nurses Association also tried to urge American officials to declare the shortage of nurses a national crisis.
According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, from February 2020 to November this year, a total of 450,000 laborers were lost in the health care industry in the United States, most of which were nurses and home care workers.
A wave of resignations erupts in the U.S.
In fact, in the context of the increasingly severe epidemic, not only is there an extreme shortage of medical staff, but also large-scale resignations have erupted in other industries.
According to a survey of job vacancies and labor mobility recently released by the US Department of Labor, the US had 10.562 million job vacancies at JOLTS in November, a sharp dro from October. This was the largest drop since the new crown epidemic.
In November, a record 4.5 million Americans voluntarily resigned, of which more than one million voluntarily quit in the leisure and hospitality industries alone, highlighting the difficulty for employers to retain employees. The number of voluntary turnover in various industries has generally increased, pushing the voluntary turnover rate to 3%, which also set a historical record.
In terms of industry segments, the number of voluntary resignations in the accommodation and food service industries has set a record, the number of resignations in the transportation and storage industries ranks second since records, and the number of resignations in the healthcare sector has also increased significantly.
A rise in the voluntary turnover rate usually means greater confidence in the workforce, and people are more willing or more able to change jobs. Some analysts say that people's voluntary resignation is motivated by record wage growth and other attractive conditions provided by employers who desperately need talent. This not only makes it more difficult for employers to fill job vacancies, but also pushes up salary levels and inflation. .
