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showing the toll COVID-19 is taking on health care facilities, including how many inpatient and ICU beds are available on a weekly basis.

Using an analysis from the University of Minnesota's 

COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project,

 NPR has created a tool that allows you to see how your local hospital and your county overall are faring.

As hospitals fill, staffing becomes biggest challenge

Medical reinforcements are hard to find

It focuses on one important metric — how many beds are filled with COVID-19 patients — and shows this for each hospital and on average for each county.

The ratio of COVID-19 hospitalizations to total beds gives a picture of how much strain a hospital is under. Though there's not a clear threshold, it's concerning when that rate rises above 10 percent, hospital capacity experts

Anything above 20 percent represents "extreme stress" for the hospital, according to a 

developed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

If that figure gets to near 50 percent or above, the stress on staff is immense. "It means the hospital is overloaded. It means other services in that hospital are being delayed. The hospital becomes a nightmare," IHME's Ali Mokdad 

The University of Minnesota's analysis shows that there are 55 counties where the average hospital has reached that rate.

Use the look-up tool below the map to find details about hospitals in your county.

Thomas Wilburn contributed to this report.

Health

COVID-19

Sean McMinn

Author

Audrey Carlsen

COVID-19 hospitalizations are skyrocketing in the U.S. A new tool from NPR lets you look up your local hospital to see how it's faring.

New data reveal which hospitals are dangerously full. Is yours?

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