Vox Sentences - Hospitals on the brink

Multiple states are seeing their hospitals stretched to capacity; a new report says 1 billion children are at extreme risk from climate change.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Gabby Birenbaum.

Delta’s impact

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

• The delta variant is sweeping through the country, with one in five intensive care units across the country at or above 95 percent capacity and seven states experiencing more hospitalizations than their prior peaks. [NYT / Albert Sun and Giulia Heyward]
• For health care workers, the new surge is overwhelming and draining, particularly given that the vast majority of hospitalizations they see are among unvaccinated people. [Stat News / Lev Facher]
• Forty-six states have seen double-digit growth in hospitalizations; nearly all the patients have contracted the delta variant and are unvaccinated. People who were finally getting care for non-Covid health conditions are being told to wait — again. [Washington Post / Frances Stead Sellers, Ariana Eunjung Cha, Hannah Knowles, and Derek Hawkins]
• In Louisiana, hospitals are so full of Covid patients that people with other conditions have had to be treated at home. Hospital personnel believe they are days away from having to refuse transport to hospitals. [CBS News]
• Florida, which has seen an explosion of cases, is also struggling with capacity. A viral photo of a clinic in Jacksonville shows patients waiting for monoclonal antibody therapy lying on the ground in pain, with the number of people exceeding the number of chairs. [Florida Times-Union / Katherine Lewin]
• Alabama has a net negative number of ICU beds, causing patient traffic jams as people who've had heart attacks or been in car accidents have to be diverted to other hospitals. [Montgomery Advertiser / Melissa Brown]

Climate change is a big risk to children

• A new report from UNICEF analyzed the risks of climate change for children. It found that 1 billion children — nearly half of the world’s 2.2 billion — live in countries that are categorized as “extremely high-risk.” [UNICEF]
• Every single child on the planet, according to the report, lives somewhere that is exposed to a major climate shock, whether that's a heat wave, a flood, a drought, or air pollution. [Energy Live News / Dimitris Mavrokefalidis]
• Children in the Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Guinea, and Guinea Bissau are living with the most risk. [La Prensa Latina]
• By combining climate maps with child vulnerability maps, which take things like poverty and access to health care into account, the report calculates the likelihood that a child will survive climate change based on where they live. [Guardian / Damian Carrington]
• Air pollution affects the greatest number of children — nine in 10. But one-third of children are exposed to heat waves, and climate change is expected to make their outcomes worse because vector-borne diseases can spread more easily in hotter environments. [TRT World]

Evacuation flights out of Kabul were temporarily paused Friday after the facility in Qatar where evacuees are being housed reached capacity. [The Hill / Laura Kelly and Rebecca Beitsch]

• The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest union, has appointed Liz Shuler as its new president, the first woman to hold the position. [Politico / Eleanor Mueller]
• Mike Richards has stepped down as the host of Jeopardy amid backlash over offensive comments he made on his former podcast. [Washington Post / Emily Yahr]
• Five-year-old Harvey Sutton became one of the youngest people ever to  hike the Appalachian Trail, summiting Mount Katahdin last week after eight months on the trail. [AP / David Sharp]

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“I had somebody who was very close to my age — I could have been her, except I was vaccinated and I haven’t gotten Covid. But she was otherwise me, and she’s dead.”

[Erin Lennon, a physician assistant working in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on what she’s seeing in the ICU] 

Vox's Benji Jones talks with author and environmental journalist Cynthia Barnett about seashells and her new book, The Sound of the Sea. They discuss the evolutionary function and human appeal of seashells, the surprising role shells played in ancient trade and commerce, and how climate change threatens the creatures that call them home. [Spotify]

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