'I Wish They Could See': Health Care Workers Tired, Demoralized

ACROSS AMERICA — Doctors and nurses across the country are "demoralized," many struggling to cope as the coronavirus continues to tighten its grip on the United States.

The United States reported a new record of 237,092 new coronavirus cases on Friday, a day after the country hit a record number of deaths — nearly 2,700 people lost their lives on Friday, and 3,300 the day before that.

Before the pandemic, ICU nurse Cassie Ban would handle two patients per shift. Now she regularly cares for four or five.

The numbers, she told The Associated Press, don't even begin to capture what COVID-19 does to each critically ill patient or the medical teams who care for them.

"We're constantly looking for beds," Ban, who works at Indiana University Health, told AP. "I wish people could see what I do. People are terrified and they’re alone. Each one of those numbers is the death of a person who wasn’t ready to go yet.”

While beds are in short supply, nurses are even more scarce, Kiersten Henry, an ICU nurse practitioner at MedStar Montgomery Medical Center in Maryland, told AP.

“I feel we’ve already run a marathon, and this is our second one. Even people who are upbeat are feeling run down at this point," Henry said.

Read more via The Associated Press

The Latest

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday night issued an emergency use authorization for the coronavirus vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, according to an announcement by the agency.

While not an official approval, the emergency use authorization will allow people 16 years of age and older to receive the vaccine in the United States.

An initial shipment of about 2.9 million doses of the vaccine will be sent around the United States over the next week, sources told The New York Times.

READ MORE: Coronavirus Vaccine Gets Emergency Use Authorization By FDA

The authorization comes as more than 237,000 new cases were reported by states as of 7 p.m. ET on Friday. The previous record of 229,668 cases was reported on Dec. 4, according to a Washington Post database.

The emergency authorization of a vaccine will kick off an unprecedented effort to stop the rampaging pandemic that's now infected at least 15.7 million people and claimed more than 294,000 lives.

Pfizer has said its clinical trials show the vaccine is about 95 percent effective. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has already been approved for use in the United Kingdom and Canada.

On Friday, the White House placed additional pressure on FDA chief Stephen Hahn to approve the virus.

In fact, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows reportedly told Hahn to grant an emergency use authorization for the vaccine by the end of Friday or face possible firing, according to the Associated Press.

Regulators had been planning to authorize emergency use early Saturday. On Friday morning, Hahn told officials at the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research to act by the end of Friday, the New York Times reported.

As the vaccine receives emergency use authorization, the United States is likely to soon surpass 300,000 pandemic-related deaths. On Wednesday, the nation recorded more than 3,000 coronavirus deaths for the first time ever. The number grew to more than 3,300 on Thursday.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said we shouldn't expect the number of daily deaths to drop anytime soon.

In fact, Redfield on Thursday said the country could see more than 3,000 deaths per day for the next two to three months.

Meanwhile, strict new limits continue to be implemented to help slow the virus's spread.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday reinstated a ban on indoor dining in New York City. As of Monday, only takeout orders and outdoor dining will be allowed in the city, one of the world's great cuisine capitals, the governor said at a news conference in Albany.

Cuomo said that despite the economic pain to the city's roughly 24,000 restaurants and their legions of workers, he needed to act.

“In New York City, you put the CDC caution on indoor dining together with the rate of transmission and the density and the crowding, that is a bad situation,” he said, adding that the shutdown will be evaluated again after two weeks.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he supported Cuomo's decision.

“This is painful. So many restaurants are struggling. But we can’t allow this virus to reassert itself in our city," the Democratic mayor said on Twitter.

READ: NYC Indoor Dining To Close; Decision Coming For Rest Of State

Hospitalizations due to the virus have also reached an all-time high — and now there is public data that can help Americans see how full the hospitals are near them. A "look-up tool" was released by NPR this week that is searchable by county.

Some of the nation's largest hospitals have reported having fewer than 15 percent of intensive care beds available as of last week, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services as cited by The New York Times.

Newest Numbers

At least 2,950 new coronavirus deaths and more than 237,092 new daily cases were reported in the United States on Friday, according to a Washington Post database. Over the past seven days, the United States has averaged more than 210,400 cases each day.

As of Saturday, 47 states and Puerto Rico remained above the positive testing rate recommended by the World Health Organization to safely reopen. To safely reopen, the WHO recommends states remain at 5 percent or lower for at least 14 days.

More than 15.85 million people in the United States had tested positive for the coronavirus as of Saturday morning, and more than 295,500 have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Stay up to date on the latest coronavirus news via The New York Times or Washington Post.

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