United States: While extreme heat envelops most parts of the United States, a number of state hospitals are treating an exorbitant number of heat-related illnesses, as noted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and meteorologists while alerting that further warmer temperatures are on the way.
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According to CDC maps, the states experiencing the highest number of heat-related illnesses are not always the ones with higher temperatures than usual.
Most areas of the South and Southwest are experiencing temperatures rising into the high 90s and beyond. The number of heat-associated ER visits there is relatively lower than that observed in the states in the NE, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and Mountain West, which are in the 80-90 degree range.
For instance, on Saturday, hospitals in more than two-quarters of states in six of the regions said the rates of heat-related emergencies were extremely high while the temperatures ranged in that lower bracket, as CNN Health reported.
As for the meaning of “very high” volume, the CDC has identified it as a ranking of the days involved in emergency department visits from the five-year period from 2018 through 2023, where such days belong to the top 5 percent in terms of heat ailments.
Buildings incompatible with high temperatures
According to the CDC health scientist, Claudia Brown as the buildings in those area are not designed in a way to deal with exhorbitant heat, and also people bodies themselves in those area are not used to handling much temperatures.
As Brown, who works in the Climate and Health Program at the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, “So in these more northern regions, for example, there tends to be less prevalence of air conditioning in the homes,” as CNN Health reported.
“So you may not have as high of temperatures as you have in, say, Arizona, but you have a higher health impact because they don’t have, necessarily, the infrastructure in place to deal with that heat,” she continued.
Various Steps taken by experts
As climate change continues to cause more intense heat waves, the CDC released this year a new heat risk tool. People can enter a zip code to see a heat advisory and suggestions on how to protect themselves.
Dr. Cheyenne Falat works in the emergency department at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, which declared a code red heat alert over the weekend and opened several cooling stations for the people.
Falat, who also specializes in environmental medicine, said, “We have seen some pretty significant cases of heat stroke and other heat illnesses coming in over the past few weeks, not just the past few days.”