Registered nurse Sara Nystrom, of Townshend, Vt., prepares to enter a patient's room in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, N.H., Jan. 3, 2022. The omicron variant had caused a surge of new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and many hospitals were not only swamped with cases but severely shorthanded because of so many employees out with COVID-19. Steven Senne/AP Photo