Idaho rations healthcare amid COVID-19 surge

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare declared northern and north-central Idaho at crisis level and distributed legal and ethical templates for healthcare providers to ration services. The template considers multiple factors before giving patients a priority score indicating their likelihood of surviving a health crisis. Those with a high enough score will be placed on a list for depleting resources such as oxygen tanks and ICU beds. Rural hospitals have not had to ration care, but they have nowhere to send critical patients.

Who is getting sick? Children accounted for about a quarter of new coronavirus infections in the United States last week, according to new data from the American Academy of Pediatrics. The most vulnerable age group for deaths is now 50 to 64. The Biden administration set Sept. 20 as the target date to make vaccine boosters widely available despite the World Health Organization asking wealthy countries to halt booster shots until every country reaches a 40 percent vaccination rate. About 5.5 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, 80 percent of which were in upper- and middle-income countries.

Dig deeper: Read Joshua Raimundo’s report in World Tour about China using COVID-19 vaccines to expand its influence in Latin America.