The New York Times: “Just over one-fifth of U.S. hospitals with intensive care units, or 638 total hospitals, reported that at least 95 percent of their I.C.U. beds were full in the week ending Dec. 31. Nationwide, 77 percent of intensive care hospital beds were occupied. These numbers, which come from a dataset released weekly by the Department of Health and Human Services, show a continuation of the worrisome state of hospitalizations indicated by the previous week’s dataset. For the week ending Dec. 24, 19 percent of U.S. hospitals with intensive care units reported that at least 95 percent of their I.C.U. beds were full, and 78 percent of I.C.U. beds were occupied nationwide. This week’s dataset may not yet capture the effect that holiday gatherings and travel have had on the number of U.S. residents who are very sick with Covid-19. For the last two weeks of 2020, the Transportation Security Administration said it screened an average of more than one million travelers per day. Because days pass between when a person becomes infected and requires hospitalization, and because lags in reporting may have been exacerbated by the holidays, the picture may become clearer with the dataset that the health department is expected to release next Monday. See how the pandemic has affected recent hospital capacity in the map below, which shows data reported by individual hospitals. Health officials said that the data should not discourage sick people from seeking care…”