Imagine being sick and needing immediate medical attention, but when you rush to the emergency room, you’re turned away because there aren’t enough doctors and nurses to care for any more patients. Unfortunately, that situation could become reality in Georgia.

Currently, there are approximately 6,000 people hospitalized for Covid in the state of Georgia. That’s more Covid patients than hospitals saw in January. ICU’s in Georgia are 97% full.

Georgia is currently among the top 5 states in the country with the most Covid hospitalizations. These hospitalizations are also putting a strain on the staff at the hospitals.

Even if you don’t get Covid, there are multiple other reasons people go to the hospital. For example, if someone has a heart attack or a stroke, they might rush to the emergency room. Unfortunately, if there are too many patients at the hospital already, some of these new patients might get turned away in the near future.

Dr. Carlos Del Rio told CBS 46, “If you have a stroke, a heart attack, a surgery, they may not be able to take care of you because the hospitals are at capacity.” 

If the hospital doesn’t turn you away, the wait in the emergency room might be much longer than you expected. We’re not just talking about hours. According to Dr. Del Rio, “You may be in the emergency room for days.”

What if you come to the hospital because you have Covid? According to Dr. Dave Davis of Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta, “In some places they are just having to send COVID-19 patients to a different hospital, because they don’t have enough room for COVID-19 patients.”

If there are fewer Covid patients, there are fewer patients over all which means there’s more room for people experiencing other health issues. Doctors recommend doing everything you can to avoid becoming a Covid patient. According to Dr. Del Rio, “Get you vaccines, the best thing you can do is not become a patient.”

Watch the video below for more information about the Covid crisis including how it is effecting children.

If hospitals reach capacity, it may come down to a choice between treated vaccinated patients or unvaccinated patients, but Dr. Fauci hopes it doesn’t come to that. He said, “Prioritizing a vaccinated person versus an unvaccinated person I don’t think we’re going get there. But there are talks of that. What we really should be doing, is to do everything that we can to mitigate this number of infected people requiring hospitalization.”