The Environmental Protection Agency faces challenges during a government shutdown.

More than 40% of Americans now live in areas running out of ICU space, with only 15% of beds still available. According to data through Thursday from the COVID Tracking Project, hospitalizations are still high in the West and the South, with over 80,000 current COVID-19 hospital patients in those regions. “Initially, when the COVID surges were hitting one part of the country at a time, traveling nurses were able to go to areas more severely affected. “There’s a lot of these agencies that are out there charging absolutely ridiculous sums of money to get ICU nurses in,” Boom said. Augusta University Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia, is treating adult ICU patients, under age 30, in the children’s hospital.