Rising coronavirus cases may push hospitals past capacity and force states to shut down, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, CNN Medical Analyst and professor of medicine at George Washington University, said Saturday.
The US is headed towards “an intolerable number of deaths,” Reiner told CNN’s Ana Cabrera.
Reiner said the continued rise in cases will result in hospital intensive care units (ICU) reaching capacity.
“You can make more ICU beds, but what you can't make are more ICU nurses,” he said. “We will run out of the capacity in many of these hospitals to care for the critically ill.”
Reiner said that governors will start to institute restrictions and shutdowns in their states.
“They'll do it when their hospitals are saturated. They'll do it whether they want to or not. They'll do it whether the outgoing President wants them to or not,” he said.
It’s not entirely too late to turn things around, Reiner noted.
“What they should be doing now instead, to derail this out of control train, is to institute universal mask orders throughout their states,” he said. “Otherwise the shutdowns are coming, but at great cost.”
