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What first struck Nathaniel Osborn when he and his wife took their son, Seth, to the emergency room this summer was how packed the waiting room was for a Wednesday at 1 p.m. The Florida hospital’s emergency room was so crowded there weren’t enough chairs for the family to all sit as they waited. And waited. Hours passed and 12-year-old Seth’s condition worsened, his body quivering from the pain shooting across his lower belly. Osborn said his wife asked why it was taking so long to be seen. A nurse rolled her eyes and muttered, “COVID.” (Deam, 9/15)

Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth is rescheduling all elective surgeries that require inpatient admission to Oct. 11 or later due to the latest surge of COVID-19, the hospital said in a prepared statement issued Thursday evening. “We’re taking this extraordinary step to utilize Cook Children’s perioperative RNs in other areas of the hospital, including ICUs,” the statement said. “As reported in the media week after week, pediatric beds in our community are scarce, and Cook Children’s is no exception. (9/16)

KHN: Covid-Overwhelmed Hospitals Postpone Cancer Care And Other Treatment 

It’s a bad time to get sick in Oregon. That’s the message from some doctors, as hospitals fill up with covid-19 patients and other medical conditions go untreated. Charlie Callagan looked perfectly healthy sitting outside recently on his deck in the smoky summer air in the small Rogue Valley town of Merlin, in southern Oregon. But Callagan, 72, has a condition called multiple myeloma, a blood cancer of the bone marrow. “It affects the immune system; it affects the bones,” he said. “I had a PET scan that described my bones as looking ‘kind of Swiss cheese-like.’” (Neumann, 9/17)

The state’s Covid cases and hospitalizations have dipped over the past week, Georgia health officials have reported. But that drop isn’t relieving the pressure on the front lines of hospitals — both smaller facilities and large urban centers. Take Appling Healthcare, which operates a rural hospital of 34 beds in Baxley, in southeast Georgia. (Miller, 9/16)

Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor saw a record number of coronavirus hospitalizations on Thursday as the delta variant continues to spread across the state. A total of 58 people were hospitalized in the hospital that day, beating the previous record of 55 the hospital set on Dec. 31, 2020, amid that period’s winter surge, according to data from Northern Light Health. The record hospitalizations are indicative of the significant community spread occurring in Penobscot County, which has seen a significant number of cases in recent days. It is also another indicator that the present surge is eclipsing the worst seen in the county last winter. The 164 cases reported on Wednesday were the highest ever seen in the county. (Marino Jr., 9/16)

COVID-19 hospitalizations are declining across Texas and the Houston region, but ICUs remain stubbornly full, as the sickest patients require care for a longer period of time. Last week, the number of available adult ICU beds in Texas sunk below 300 for the first time in the pandemic, with 270 beds available on Sept. 8 and 279 available on Sept. 9, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. There were 326 beds available this Wednesday, including 65 in the nine-county region surrounding Houston, the data show. (Gill, 9/16)

As the ultra-contagious delta variant continues to tear across the Southeast, the COVID-19 patients hospitalized here are sicker and stay longer than those earlier in the pandemic. They’re younger and require more care, more resources, more ventilators. And there have been way more of them than at any other point over the past 18 months, despite the widespread availability of vaccines. Memorial Health cared for a record-high 178 COVID-19 patients at the end of August, according to the hospital. That’s more than twice as many as it did during previous pandemic peaks, said Dr. Stephen Thacker, the hospital’s associate chief medical officer. The week the Atlanta Journal-Constitution visited Savannah in early September, Georgia reported the country’s fourth-highest number of COVID-19 hospital admissions. (Hallerman, 9/16)