Federal authorities raising concerns about NC hospital staffing
Federal authorities are raising some concerns at the week-over-week increase in the number of North Carolina hospitals experiencing staff shortages.
A summary in the state's briefing from the White House Coronavirus Task Force says that hospitals are reporting critical staffing shortages, but the state is managing and has a strong system in place to support requests from facilities.
The number hospitals experiencing staff shortages is still relatively low but the rate at which it is increasing is causing federal health officials. In one week, the number of hospitals experiencing a shortage increased by 67 percent.
That’s noted in a chart by a dark red. It isn't the color that's most alarming, though. The task force has now added 'darkest red' as the latest way to convey the severity of the surge in cases and the impact on states.
This information was originally published in an article by by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative news organization based in Washington, D.C.
The reports themselves are changing too. Before, the task force was sending these briefings to states regularly but now state officials must ask for the documents, which not only include data points like changes in staffing but also recommendations for how to curb the spread of the virus.
Other information includes a look at how the virus is spreading in specific metro areas.
Some differ from how their counties are trending. For example, Durham County is orange but Durham, as a city, is yellow. On the flip side, Cumberland county is orange too but Fayetteville, red.
The summary notes that 98% of all counties In North Carolina have moderate or high levels of community transmission -- and in the three weeks leading up to when these documents were published, Mecklenburg, Wake and Guilford counties had the highest number of new cases and accounted for almost 24-percent of all new cases in the state.
This latest briefing is from December 13.
