Hospitals nationwide are once again buckling under the strain of COVID-19 cases as the ultratransmissible omicron wave crashes into health care systems that are already critically short-staffed and exhausted from previous waves of the pandemic.

The evidence of the capacity crisis was everywhere — with patients in hallways and placed in any spare room. Dr. Eric Dickson, CEO and president of UMass Memorial Health, said one patient, a 90-year-old woman, was placed in a pediatric trauma room. 

Worcester, Massachusetts (CNN) - An incoming tide of patients is slowly drowning UMass Memorial Medical Center, and the US military's National Guard is working to plug the gaps. In wave after daily wave, the emergency crews pull up to the ambulance bay, dropping off patients for which there is no room.

"It's just the perfect storm for a nightmare here in the emergency department," says Dr. Eric Dickson, the CEO of the hospital and an emergency physician.

WORCESTER, Mass. — A COVID-19 testing site in Worcester made an emergency call for staffing help Friday night

The UMass Memorial Health President and CEO Dr. Eric Dickson said the Mercantile Center in Worcester and the testing site at the New England Sports Center in Marlboro, both need more workers to help run the operations.

Hospital officials in Massachusetts are warning that intensive care unit (ICU) beds are nearing capacity as the state's positivity rate nearly doubled in a week due to the highly contagious Omicron variant.

"I was searching for an ICU bed for one of our patients, and every single facility is full. They are at full capacity. They have no ICU beds left," Dr. Melisa Lai-Becker, the medical director for the emergency department at Cambridge Health Alliance's Everett Hospital, told WGBH on Monday.

WORCESTER, Mass. - In just one week, the City of Worcester has reported its highest one day increase, one week increase and seven-day average of COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic.

Since last week, Worcester reports 3,513 new confirmed positive cases, adding to the city’s total of 38,342 cases since March 2020. On Wednesday alone, the city reported 1,094 new cases. 

The website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention includes scores of bullet points and lists on how best to protect friends and family from COVID-19.

Regardless of the tab or sections, the information boils down to the same thing: get vaccinated.

WORCESTER (CBS) – The president of UMass Memorial Health Care says this month is going to be “rough” for hospitals in the state.

Dr. Eric Dickson told WBZ-TV’s Christina Hager Monday that the “crunch time” for this latest surge of COVID-19 will be in the next two weeks. He said the positivity rates are so high because the Omicron variant is a “hyper-infectious virus.”

Bay Staters are having their patience tested to kick off the year as thousands of people on Monday waited in massive lines — some shivering in the bitter cold for hours — to get tested for COVID amid the omicron surge.

As sites get overwhelmed following the holidays, local officials are pleading with Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration to add more locations to address the coronavirus testing “log jam.”