Nurses attend to a Covid-19 patient in the ICU at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana, California, on December 18. | Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images

Adding trained staff is much more difficult than making a physical ICU bed, especially deep into a pandemic.

As of mid-December, hospitals on average had just 22 percent of their intensive care unit (ICU) beds available across the country, and many were completely full. As the Covid-19 surge continues to intensify, lack of ICU beds can have dire consequences, including not being able to properly care for the sickest patients, potentially rationing lifesaving care.

But even these bed capacity numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Adding extra critical-care beds in other departments or buildings takes precious time, resources, and space. But adding trained staff is much more difficult, especially deep into