By JOHN TOZZI | Bloomberg | Published: December 28, 2020 Stars and Stripes is making stories on the coronavirus pandemic available free of charge. See other free reports here. Sign up for our daily coronavirus newsletter here. Please support our journalism with a subscription. COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. reached new highs this week, testing the nation's health-care workforce as the virus sidelines medical workers. More than 118,000 people — roughly equivalent to the population of Lansing, Mich. — have been in hospitals with COVID on average over the past seven days. That's a record, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project. While record COVID admissions strain emergency rooms and intensive care units, the crisis squeezes smaller clinics, too. Uncontrolled infections mean more patients coming in, even as staff exposed to the virus must stay home.