# disaster
A total of 145,982 people were infected with COVID-19 in US hospitals, including 4,462 children, surpassing the previous record of 142,273 set on January 14, 2021, during the height of the pandemic in the country.
But highly propagable Omicron variants could kill that benchmark.
Disease modelers predict that total hospitalizations will range from 275,000 to 300,000 when they peak, probably later this month.
As of Monday, Colorado, Oregon, Louisiana, Maryland and Virginia had declared public health emergencies or authorized crisis care standards that allow hospitals and ambulances to limit treatment if they can't keep up with demand. Nurses and other hospital staff continued to get sick themselves, raising the patient-nurse ratio to very high levels in some places. "Our systems and personnel are under extreme stress, and I'm not sure how long we can hold out," Russell Bull, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, said in an email.