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The Health and Human Services Department has chosen the grantees for $103 million to address healthcare worker burnout and improve employees' mental health and well-being, the department announced Thursday. The money, made available through the American Rescue Plan Act and distributed by the Health Resources and Services Administration, will be split among 45 grantees. The grants place a specific focus on programs in underserved and rural communities, according to a HRSA news release. The dollars will fund projects including hiring resiliency trainers to support healthcare staff, establishing health system-wide wellness programs and devising initiatives to overcome the stigma associated with healthcare workers seeking mental health treatment. (Goldman, 1/20)

Top doctors at six of metro Atlanta’s largest hospital groups made extraordinary pleas on Thursday for Georgians to get vaccinated and take steps to reduce coronavirus infections to ensure emergency rooms and hospitals can care for people most in need. In an hourlong briefing, the hospital leaders spoke of overflowing emergency rooms, dying patients, and devastated ICU nurses spread too thin. They said they are grappling with a combination of factors, including a high volume of patients, staff shortages and difficulty getting COVID-19 therapeutics. It’s all resulting in them having to ration care for only the sickest of patients. (Trubey and Hart, 1/20)

Oyinkansola is exhausted. The emergency physician at Advocate Aurora Health isn't just overworked because of labor shortages and fellow providers out with COVID-19, she's exhausted by the deaths. "It is exhausting to speak to somebody the same age as myself, who is going to die," says Oyinkansola, identified only by her first name, in the health system's Voices from the Frontlines videos. "And this is all so preventable." (Asplund, 1/20)

Twenty Ohio National Guard members have arrived at Christ Hospital Health Network to assist health workers in day-to-day operations amid the region's COVID-19 surge. The guard members arrived in the area this week as it continues to battle rising caseloads of COVID-19, record-setting hospitalizations, and a peak still yet to come. The omicron surge has put growing stress on the region's 40 hospitals, with 4 of every 10 patients now suffering from the novel coronavirus. (Sutherland, 1/20)

Southern Nevada’s public agencies have not been immune to the latest variant-fueled surge of COVID-19 cases ripping through the region as employees call out sick in levels some say have been unprecedented. “It hit us just like it hit everybody else — pretty solid,” Clark County Fire Chief John Steinbeck said. The department recently recorded more workers out sick than at any other point in the pandemic. Earlier this month, the Metropolitan Police Department saw more employees test positive for COVID-19 than in any other single week since the public health crisis began. (Johnson and Apgar, 1/20)

As the Omicron variant rips across the U.S., in early January almost 9 million Americans said they were not working because they had COVID-19 or were caring for someone with the virus — triple the number from a month ago. The surge in sick workers is impacting industries ranging from hospitals to airlines, adding to the nation's labor crunch. (Picchi, 1/20)