While Americans are eagerly awaiting coronavirus vaccines to be authorized, doctors and nurses across the US are facing a difficult truth as hospitals try to find creative ways to handle the surging number of patients that exceeds 100,000 nationwide.

© Jae C. Hong/AP
FILE – In this Nov. 19, 2020, file photo, EMT Giselle Dorgalli, second from right, looks at a monitor while performing chest compression on a patient who tested positive for coronavirus in the emergency room at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles. Amid the coronavirus resurgence, states have begun reopening field hospitals to handle an influx of sick patients that is pushing health care systems — and their workers — to the breaking point. Hospitals are bringing in mobile morgues. And funerals are once again being livestreamed or performed as drive-by affairs. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

One county official

Care New England opened a field hospital with more than 300 beds in Cranston on Monday, the same day the state sent an emergency alert saying conventional hospitals had reached their coronavirus capacity.

A facility with nearly 600 beds opened Tuesday at the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence. It is run by Lifespan, the state’s largest hospital group.

The Lifespan facility expects to admit 24 to

Health officials fear the crisis will be even worse in coming weeks, after many Americans ignored pleas to stay home over Thanksgiving and avoid people who don’t live with them.

“I have no doubt that we’re going to see a climbing death toll … and that’s a horrific and tragic place to be,” said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy at the Kaiser

MEMPHIS, Mo. – As Dr. Shane Wilson makes the rounds at the tiny, 25-bed hospital in rural northeastern Missouri, many of his movements are familiar in an age of coronavirus. Masks and gloves. Zippered plastic walls between hallways. Hand sanitizer as he enters and exits each room.

But one thing is starkly different. Born and raised in the town of just 1,800, Wilson knows most of his patients by their first names.

He visits a woman who used to be a gym teacher at his school, and later laughingly recalls a day she caught him smoking at school and made him and a friend pick up cigarette butts as punishment. Another man was in the middle of his soybean harvest when he fell ill and couldn’t finish.

In November, Wilson treated his own father, who along with his wife used to work at the same hospital. The 74-year-old elder Wilson

He visits a woman who used to be a gym teacher at his school, and later laughingly recalls a day she caught him smoking at school and made him and a friend pick up cigarette butts as punishment. Another man was in the middle of his soybean harvest when he fell ill and couldn’t finish.

In November, Wilson treated his own father, who along with his wife used to work at the same hospital. The 74-year-old elder

Britain said Sunday it has secured 2 million more doses of a promising coronavirus vaccine as it gears up to launch within days the country’s most ambitious inoculation program in decades.

The U.K. has had Europe’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak, with more than 58,000 confirmed virus-related deaths. It now hopes to hit a more positive milestone by becoming one of the first countries in the world to start vaccinating its population against COVID-19.

CORONAVIRUS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

The U.K. government has agreed to buy more than 350 million doses of vaccines from seven different producers, should they prove effective, as it prepares to vaccinate as many of the country’s 67 million people as possible.

The Department of Health said Sunday it had increased its order for a vaccine developed by U.S. firm Moderna from 5 million to 7 million doses, enough for 3.5 million people.

The Moderna vaccine is

Hospitals have been told to prepare for the rollout of a coronavirus vaccine in as little as 10 days’ time, with NHS workers expected to be front of the queue, the Guardian has learned.

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Photograph: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images

NHS bosses said hospitals in England could expect to receive their first deliveries of a vaccine produced by Pfizer/BioNTech as soon as Monday 7 December, with regulatory approval anticipated within days.

According to sources at several hospitals across the country, NHS England said they should expect to get stocks of vaccine on 7, 8 or 9 December.

Initially only NHS staff are set to be given the jab, with care home residents and the over-80s having to wait. This is despite those two groups being classed by the government as top priorities for Covid immunisation, as they have the greatest risk of death from the disease. Care

J.W. Cowan began his career 40 years ago trying to recruit nurses to what he now calls “forgotten man’s territory” in rural Alabama.

“A good rural nurse, I don’t know of anything that’s any tougher than that,” he said. “They persevere. They put the community, they put the hospital first, and my hat just goes out to them.”

Today, he is still trying to recruit nurses to Choctaw County near Mississippi, except he’s doing it in a pandemic. And the job has only gotten tougher and nurses are more in demand across the country, making it even harder to staff rural hospitals.

Cowan is an administrator at Choctaw General Hospital. His staff are working back-to-back, 12-hour shifts during the pandemic. One nurse worked a 96-hour week, and it’s not unusual for nurses to work seven days in a row to keep the hospital staffed.

Like at Choctaw General, hospitals across

The one dose is administered intravenously and can be used in individuals ages 12 or older, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health.

“The goal is to keep them out of the hospital and keep them from decompensating more,” said Dr. Alan Jones, University of Mississippi Medical Center Assistant Vice-Chancellor for Clinical Affairs, last week at a briefing with press.

George Regional Hospital in Lucedale administered the treatment for the first time to two COVID-19 positive