COVID patients overwhelm Texas hospitals, amid 'hair on fire' crisis

COVID patients overwhelm Texas hospitals, amid 'hair on fire' crisis State hospitals are buckling under the pressure of 1,700 patients a day. ABC News ABC News

Hospitals across the state of Texas are once again finding themselves buckling under the pressures of an overwhelmed health system, with an average of more than 1,700 patients a day currently streaming into emergency rooms across the state.

"I feel like the surge came on quicker than we were expecting," Dr. Lindsay Sonstein, a general medicine physician at the University of Texas Medical Branch's Jennie Sealy Hospital, told ABC News. "All of a sudden, it's exponential rise again in the middle of the summer."

Nationwide, more than 100,000 patients are currently hospitalized with COVID-19. About 14,000 of those patients are in Texas -- the highest number of patients receiving care on record. And statewide, nearly 94% of intensive care unit beds are currently in use by COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients.

At Jennie Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas, front-line workers told ABC News that at times, they feel "hopeless" amid this latest surge, particularly given the fact that among those with the virus currently being treated in the ICU, all but one patient, who is immunocompromised, are unvaccinated. ...