Page 8 - Er S News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Effect that then clogs up our e.r.s, clogs up everything else. >> reporter: with more than 121,000 new child covid cases reported in the u.s. last week, texas and florida lead the nation in new pediatric cases. while in mississippi, a 13-year-old died just one day after testing positive for covid. >> the child went to the hospital but they sent her home the same evening knowing she was sick. they should have sent her to a hospital to get her some help. >> reporter: but the debate over masking in schools rages on. schools in broward county florida instituting mask mandates as students return to...

Now, there are across the state makeshift icus. icu patients in hallways, icu patients being held in e.r.s, med-surge patients on high flow oxygen and more invasive devices that are in nontraditional areas that they should be. look, in terms of the state of the hospital system, we're standing in a garage with field hospitals. i think that speaks for itself. i mean health care in mississippi is not good right now in terms of what we can do just from -- just from the standpoint of being able to care for the patients the way that we as physicians would expect to care for a patient. these are not ...

Limits. that field hospital, though, in the basement at the university of mississippi medical center is still not enough in mississippi. today mississippi health officials held a press conference to announce a second field hospital being opened in a second parking garage at the university of mississippi medical center. one of the doctors at the press conference today, dr. alan jones, said last week that the state was on the brink of the state's hospital system failing. a reporter today asked him to give an update on that, to let people know if that was still the case. this is what he said. >> ...

Diseases at the university of alabama birmingham. doctor, thanks for being with us this morning. can you explain, what is a negative 11 beds? does that mean they're converting other spaces into i.c.u. units? what is that? >> yeah, good morning, brianna. unfortunately it means several very bad things. so, first of all, it means that you have patients who qualify for entry or admission into the i.c.u., but simply can't be accommodated. so where do those patients go? unfortunately they stay in the emergency room. they may even stay on the regular floor where you're already stretched for capacity ...

Running out of nursing staff in e.r.s, icus and operating rooms. >> this pace is simply not sstainable. we will not have enough hospital space. we will not have enough nursing staff. >> reporter: 1,500 covid patients now streaming into hospitals, but the state tonight has just 368 icu beds available. covid patients like tim cotto have been waiting for days for an open icu bed. >> the nurse comes running out that he'd gotten a bed in new mexico. we were so excited, and we celebrated, but unfortunately, since then, my husband has taken a turn for the worse and he desperately needs an icu bed in ...