Hospitals across the nation are overwhelmed. With the number of coronavirus cases hospitals are always overloaded. Doctors and nurses are frustrated.

      The number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 in the U.S. has doubled in the past month and set new records every day this week. As of Tuesday, November 15, 2020, nearly 77,000 people were hospitalized with the virus. Newly confirmed infections per day in the U.S. have exploded more than 80% over the past two weeks to the highest levels on record, with the daily count running at close to 160,000 on average. Cases are on the rise in all 50 states. Deaths are averaging more than 1,155 per day, the highest in months according to AP news. 

      Houston hospitals have been forced to treat hundreds of COVID-19 patients in their emergency rooms, sometimes for several hours or multiple days, as they scramble to open additional intensive care beds for the wave of seriously ill people streaming through their doors, according to internal numbers shared with NBC News and ProPublica. At the same time, the region’s 12 busiest hospitals are increasingly telling emergency responders that they cannot safely accept new patients, at a rate nearly three times that of a year ago, according to data reviewed by reporters.

    Hospitals around the nation have been struggling to find space for those infected and sick. They have started to expand capacity, but there is only a limit to what a hospital can do to respond to this crisis.