
(HealthDay News) — As the daily toll of new coronavirus cases broke yet another record and topped 55,000 on Thursday, COVID-19 hospitalizations were also climbing across the South and West. Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Nevada and Arizona all set records for hospitalizations on Thursday, a sobering harbinger of what is yet to come, the Washington Post reported. The virus appears to be spreading wildly in Arizona, as hospitals rushed to expand capacity and adopted practices similar to those employed at the height of the outbreak in New York City and Italy, the Post reported. Those measures include doubling up hospital beds in rooms, pausing elective surgeries and bringing in health-care workers from other states. Preparing for the worst, state officials this week activated crisis protocols, which determine for hospitals which patients get ventilators and care as the system becomes overwhelmed under the crush of patients, the Post reported. “You look at what happened in Lombardy, Italy. What happened in New York. That’s what is about to happen here. People are going to die because our system is overwhelmed,” said Will Humble, who directed Arizona’s Department of Health Services for six years under its previous Republican governor. “It’s important for other states to learn from us. This wasn’t bad luck. It was avoidable. Don’t let this happen to you. You look back at the past few months… read on >