What hospitals look like in US Covid-19 hot spots right now

With cases of the virus surging in most of the United States -- driven by unvaccinated Americans and fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant -- Covid-19 hospitalizations are climbing in some parts of the country, and hospitals are again bracing for another round of devastation.

"I remember seeing articles in the news about hospitals in California with empty Covid units and I longed for that experience," Segarra, the chief medical officer with Baptist Health's Baptist Hospital, said. "It's an experience we were working our way towards that unfortunately has taken a rather sad turn." In the weeks since, the hospital's Covid-19 patient numbers have more than tripled, and staff are now treating more than 70 people, an "exponential growth," he said, that they were not expecting. To accommodate the climbing patient numbers, the hospital recently reopened two units that were previously shut down.