Nor were the hospital where I work ever full to the point that I feel they needed to take such drastic action
If you watched the national news the last few weeks, AZ, TX and FL all reported some of their hospitals were at or near capacity. They showed videos of COVID patients in the hallways. They also mentioned there wasn't enough beds, and sometimes ventilators. They had to wait for a bed to be free, which sometimes meant people died, freeing up the bed to be filled with the next COVID patient.
Some of NYC went through the same thing. Elmhurst Hospital in Queens went though exactly the same thing and was on the news, with almost the same reports and video footage. I felt like I was going through déjà vu. I had to stop watching as I thought I wouldn't see those kind of incidences until we went through a second wave here in the fall.
Corona, NY, (Queens) lists 5047 COVID cases in ONE zip code. Similar for adjacent Elmhurst with 3,492 cases, East Elmhurst with 1,724 and Jackson Heights with 2,782 cases. That'sover 13,000 COVID cases in that one area for Elmhurst hospital to handle.
Here is an article that was in the NY Post and was also on the local news stations, during the apex, when there were COVID case coming to a hospital in NYC every 14 minutes and a COVID death happening every 2.5 minutes. There just wasn't enough ambulances to get to everyone on time. So, the EMS and ambulances were told that if they arrived and couldn't find a pulse, to NOT try to resuscitate. To simply report the death, and head onto the next person on the very long 911 list. It's actually a war time tactic that medics out on the battle fields use. They can't save everyone. While they are working on someone who can't be saved, someone else they can save may be dying.
Once it was reported in the NY Post, they stopped doing this. Yet, there was an updated/revised daily COVID deaths list, sometime later, where about 3000 new cases were added on one day. When asked what those cases were, the Dept. of Health said it was the cases where the National Guard retrieved bodies at people's homes.
They might not all be from not resuscitating people. That's still a lot of people who died at home, possibly alone.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/21/ny-issues-do-not-resuscitate-guideline-for-cardiac-patients/