A database tracking hospital capacity across the United States rates Kentucky’s situation as “unsustainable,” meaning that the daily case count is on a trend to exceed hospital capacity within the next ten days.
The database points out that systems that are unsustainable will need to implement “circuit breakers” to prevent the system from being overwhelmed. These are short-term restrictions designed to flatten the hospitalization curve, such as stopping elective surgeries, eliminating indoor dining, stopping concerts, and encouraging working from home.
Here is the Kentucky data from the site:
Note the “new cases yesterday” number, and compare it to the number of cases needed to reach circuit breaker status.
There is also a county-by-county map on the site, which shows numerous counties already at or over capacity in their hospitals, and many others projected to exceed their capacity.
The designers of the database and site note that they are relying on HHS data for hospitalizations, which tends to overestimate the number of free beds. Therefore, the circuit-breaker threshold may actually be lower (sooner) than shown on the site.
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