A health care worker tends to a Covid-19 patient at Providence St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, California, on January 11. | Ariana Drehsler/AFP via Getty Images

When hospitals fill up, the risk of death for coronavirus patients spikes, new studies find.

Doctors have been warning for months that, even though they’re better at saving the lives of critically ill Covid-19 patients, those gains will fade if hospitals become overwhelmed like they did in the early days of the pandemic.

With coronavirus deaths now soaring in the US and several other countries, this prediction may be playing out: The crush of new Covid-19 hospital patients is probably leading to more deaths.

When intensive care units go from zero beds occupied to every bed full, patients have a 92 percent increased risk of death from Covid-19, according to a pre-print published