The Biden Administration begins sending additional federal health care workers this week, to half-a-dozen states hit hard by a surge of COVID-19 cases.
Many hospital systems are suffering severe staff shortages because of the highly contagious Omicron variant.
President Biden announced last week that he’s deploying military medical personnel to states including Michigan, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio and Rhode Island.
In Detroit, the Henry Ford health system’s Chief Medical Officer Doctor John Deledda says the new reinforcements will offer its suburban Wyandotte hospital an extra month of help for frontline health care workers struggling to keep up with a spike in COVID patients.
“They have absolutely for the past two years put this pandemic on their backs. Many, many people have been broken by this.”
The Biden administration says it has about a thousand members of the military ready to assist overwhelmed hospitals deal with critical care issues.