For the first time ever, and amid a major surge in coronavirus cases, Idaho public health officials are activating "crisis standards of care," which means not all patients will get the usual level of medical care they need or might otherwise expect. The move comes as 66% of ICU beds are full across the state, which has one of the nation's lowest vaccination rates, at 39.7%.
As my colleague Alice Park, who's working on an upcoming story about the crisis in rationing critical care, explained over email, "normal standards of care that hospitals provide will be preempted by other dictating factors, most notably the scarcity of equipment, beds and health care staff. The declaration minimizes liability for doctors, nurses, health care workers and hospitals if they aren't able to respond with the same level of services and resources as they normally would."
Idaho is far from the only U.S. state suffering a crisis in its hospitals. The number of available ICU beds is shrinking nationwide amid the current Delta variant-fueled surge: 79% of U.S. ICU beds are currently occupied; 31% of them by COVID-19 patients. That's forcing health-care officials to grapple with tough ethical questions—first and foremost, when there are more sick patients than there are hospital beds, who gets treated first? As Alice told me: "Should vaccinated people take precedence? Should people who followed mask and social distancing recommendations get preference over people who flouted these public health guidelines?" There are no easy answers to any of these dilemmas.
Other states could soon follow Idaho's lead. Last week, Hawaii governor David Ige signed an executive order granting legal protection to health care facilities that need to, for example, cancel elective surgeries and conserve oxygen or other medical supplies. And in New Mexico, where patients are being placed on ICU waiting lists, officials have warned that they may soon need to employ crisis standards just as Idaho has done.
Rationing care is, frankly, wrenching. So once again, it bears repeating: Getting vaccinated can help ease the strain on hospitals. As White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said this weekend on CNN, "the thing to do right now is to pull out all the stops on everything we can do to prevent new infections which will ultimately lead to hospitalization. Vaccination is the number one."
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
About 450.1 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of this morning, of which more than 375.9 million doses have been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 53.2% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
More than 221.9 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 6 a.m. E.T. today, and nearly 4.6 million people have died. On September 7, there were 721,670 new cases and 9,870 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 4.5 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded over 40.2 million coronavirus cases as of 6 a.m. E.T. today. More than 650,500 people have died. On September 7, there were 261,683 new cases and 1,513 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Sept. 8, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
You may by now have heard rumblings of the Mu variant, which the World Health Organization (WHO) classified on Aug. 30 as a "variant of interest." Mu has epidemiologists' attention in part because a paper by Japanese scientists—which has yet to be peer-reviewed—found that it's "highly resistant" to the antibodies produced by vaccinated people. A handful of cases tied to the Mu variant have been found in every U.S. state save Nebraska. So far it's not on track to become dominant in the country, but public health officials say they're keeping an eye on it regardless.
COVAX, the WHO-backed global vaccine distribution program, is falling far short of its goals, it announced today. The organization now expects to have about 1.4 billion doses ready by the end of the year, compared to the 1.9 billion it previously promised. "There has been a lot of talk about vaccine equity but too little action," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a briefing today.
Inflation is surging worldwide, causing the prices of goods and services to rise in most advanced economies. But the fact that so many countries are experiencing the phenomenon simultaneously is a sign it probably won't last, per a new analysis in the New York Times. Rather than being the result of "nation-specific policy choices," writes the Times' Jeanna Smialek, the price increases are the result of "mismatches between what consumers want to buy and what companies are able to deliver" as the pandemic and other factors cause supply chain issues. As Smialek writes, those problems should "eventually work themselves out," but how long that will take is anybody's guess.
The pandemic has had a "catastrophic" impact on poor countries' fight against tuberculosis, HIV and malaria, according to a report released today by the Global Fund, an international advocacy group that supports programs to end those diseases. About 1 million fewer people worldwide were tested and treated for tuberculosis in 2020 compared with 2019, for instance. Meanwhile, the number of people who were tested for HIV in 2020 dropped by 22% compared to 2019, and 12% fewer people took advantage of prevention services.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Angela Haupt and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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