Oregon COVID-19 patient unable to get ICU bed dies

Hospitals across the country are being pushed to the brink again.

A southern Oregon hospital has been pushed to the brink by COVID-19. CHI Mercy Health announced on Thursday that amid the "onslaught" of new cases and hospitalizations brought on by COVID-19, including highly contagious variants like delta, a patient waiting for a bed in the intensive care unit died. It's a scenario playing out in hospitals across the U.S. "This moment, we pause," the hospital said in a Facebook post. "A COVID-positive patient was in our Emergency Department, within our four walls, waiting for an open intensive care unit bed to receive life-saving care. It had been several hours because other COVID-positive patients had filled those beds. Even after expanding ICU care onto other floors, there weren't any beds available for this patient. We didn't have enough." COVID-19 cases throughout the state have grown in recent weeks amid the spread of the delta variant, which by the beginning of August, had accounted for an estimated 99% of total samples sequenced, compared with only 30% in late June, according to the Oregon Health Authority. The state reported 2,971 new cases on Thursday, 845 hospitalizations and 19 deaths.