Skip to content
Subscriber Only
Business
Prognosis

Hospitals Deluged as Vaccine Still Months Away for Most in U.S.

  • Almost twice as many hospitalized compared with earlier waves
  • Strain threatens to erode quality of care and traumatize staff
Healthcare workers attend to a Covid-19 patient at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, Calif., on Dec. 18.
Healthcare workers attend to a Covid-19 patient at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, Calif., on Dec. 18.Photographer: Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images
By

and

Covid-19 has hospitalized almost twice as many Americans as at any point in the pandemic, leaving medical providers on the brink of crisis with vaccine doses months away for most people.

The U.S. health-care system and those who serve it are enduring more strain than ever. And the virus’s grip on hospitals has shifted toward more rural communities, where treatment alternatives are scarce.