Healthcare facilities slammed by flu treating are asking staff to work overtime, setting up triage tents, restricting visitors and canceling elective surgeries, according to an article on the Time website.
“We are pretty much at capacity, and the volume is certainly different from previous flu seasons,” Dr. Alfred Tallia, professor and chair of family medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center in New Brunswick, N.J., said in the article.
The hospital’s urgent-care centers have been inundated, and its outpatient clinics have no appointments available.
In California, which has been particularly hard hit, several hospitals have set up large “surge tents” outside their emergency departments to accommodate and treat flu patients. Even then, emergency departments had standing-room only, and some patients had to be treated in hallways.
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