(Radio Iowa) – This week’s White House Coronavirus Task Force report on Iowa concludes nearly all of Iowa’s counties have moderate to high transmission of Covid. Last (Wednesday) night, the state set another record for hospitalizations, with 605 Covid patients reported in Iowa hospitals. Eli Perencevich is a professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa.

“The biggest concern is we’re going to see more deaths as hospitals get overwhelmed,” he says. And Perencevich says health care workers are burning out. “There’s evidence that there is a tipping point where hospital staff get overwhelmed,” he says. “Even if you have beds, but you don’t have enough staff, staff start getting sick, too, as we just let the virus spread.”

Last (Wednesday) night, there were Covid outbreaks at 74 Iowa nursing homes according to the state’s coronavirus tracker. At 10 p.m., the website indicated 21-hundred-66 nursing home residents had the virus, 88 more confirmed cases than had been listed at noon yesterday (Wednesday).

Governor Reynolds said last week that Iowa hospital administrators had assured her they can handle the increasing number of Covid patients. The state website indicates 33 percent of inpatient beds were available last (Wednesday) night.