omicron out there. i think that s what s leading to the hospital surges again. omicron may be less severe in terms of hospitalization, but it s still going to lead to surges. because it is so much more transmissible, even if a fraction of the percentage of the population who gets it gets admitted, hospitals will get overwhelmed. after a delta surge in the summer, our hospitals never really went back down to normal capacity. we were operating at 90% plus capacity. the reason is so many people had decompensated medical conditions from putting off medical care in 2020. now we re seeing that we re getting oechld again. yesterday for my shift i admitted a non-vaccinated covid patient, intubated him the icu doc said you just got the last icu bed.
you who don t have covid or aren t planning to get covid but who may need doctors and hospitals for other things like heart attacks, injuries, appendicitis, or elective surgery. a strain on the health care system affects us all. joining me is dr. peter hotez. he s a dean, big dean of the natural school of tropical medicine at baylor college. good morning to you. within the last hour a doctor was talking to my colleague lindsey reiser about things we had not heard about for several months. let s play it. i admitted a non-vaccinated covid patient, admitted him and the icu doc said you got the last icu bed. unless somebody else happened i m going to show up and any patients that need to go to icu