Ever since the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, all eyes have been on large cities like New York. However, the problems of well-funded urban hospitals are incomparable to those of rural ones.
It is reported by the publication “Politico”.
Every second hospital in the so-called “one-story America” has no intensive care unit. If a patient with a severe form of COVID-19 appeared in small cities, the best he could hope for was being sent to large hospitals, if there was a free bed for him.
As the newspaper notes, this once again highlights economic inequality. Trends are particularly dire as the virus moves from large cities to rural areas in the southeast and west, where it has struggled for decades to gain access to health care.
According to Medicare, 49% of low-income neighborhoods did not have intensive care beds. For comparison, in large cities this figure is only 3%.
“Even the poorest urban areas had more intensive care beds per capita than the wealthiest rural areas,” Politico stresses.
Some communities, according to media reports, have been forced by their own efforts to equip intensive care units. They attracted personnel and independently searched for the necessary equipment. However, most of these communities were forced to rely on hospitals in large cities.