COVID-19 is hitting a handful of states harder than anywhere else — California, Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee. In Tennessee, hospitals are having to improvise, as nearly 3,000 people are hospitalized for COVID-19 and treatment is underway for far more COVID patients than ever thought possible.

Clinicians say they are trying to bend but not break as they wait for vaccines.

“If we have another surge after Christmas and New Year’s like we did after Thanksgiving, it will completely break our hospitals,” Tennessee Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey said this week.

A couple of Tennessee’s rural hospitals have requested ventilators from the state’s emergency stockpile.

In Crossville,  CMC is full capacity.  Patients are being treated in the ER until a bed becomes available but that could take quite a while.  When added to the normal caseload of patients, ER visits and ambulance calls, the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing hospitals to the max.

Cumberland County has 726 active cases currently.  That’s 390 more cases than recorded active cases on December 1st.  Cumberland County has 48 fatalities from COVID-19 related illnesses.  Eleven more fatalities since December 1st.  We spoke to a Crossville doctor who simply told us “I don’t know what we’re going to do, it’s bad”