DATA BASE: Showing how full hospital I.C.U.s are in each US location

How Full Are Hospital I.C.U.s Near You? See how many Covid-19 patients are being treated, and how many I.C.U. beds remain available, at individual U.S. hospitals. nytimes

See how the coronavirus pandemic has affected recent hospital capacity in the map below, which shows data reported by individual hospitals and averaged over the week ending Dec. 10. Health officials said that the data should not discourage sick people from seeking care.

This information comes from a new dataset released by the Department of Health and Human Services that shows for the first time detailed geographic information on Covid-19 patients in hospitals. This is something public health officials have long said would be crucial to responding to the epidemic and understanding its impact.

While these numbers provide an important measure of capacity and reflect figures that hospitals have provided to the federal government, experts working with the data said that the situation may have changed since occupancy levels were reported over the seven days from Dec. 4 through Dec. 10. Some hospitals have added additional surge capacity that may not be reflected in baseline capacity figures.

The number of usable I.C.U. beds can be limited by the number of nursing staff members available to tend to intensive-care patients, a figure that is not explicitly included in the dataset. “I think the important thing about this current phase of the pandemic is it’s not so much the hospital capacity shortage that’s the issue. It’s really a shortage of personnel and healthcare workers,” said Thomas Tsai, an assistant professor of health policy at Harvard University.

The data does include information about the average number of I.C.U. beds that were “staffed.” Of the 3,220 hospitals that reported those figures, a quarter had fewer staffed beds than total I.C.U. beds. The map above shows the number of staffed I.C.U. beds where provided, and total I.C.U. beds otherwise.

The national average I.C.U. occupancy in 2010 was 67 percent, according to the Society of Critical Care Medicine, though the occupancy baseline changes depending on the place, time of year and size of hospital. The table below shows a sample of state policies and guidelines at different levels of I.C.U. occupancy. ...