Soaring Covid-19 Hospitalizations Again Put Traveling Nurses in Demand

As the number of people hospitalized due to the coronavirus rises across the U.S., hospitals are turning to a tactic they used in earlier surges: hiring more traveling nurses. Demand is so great that hospitals are paying as much as twice the usual hourly pay for nurses, in one case $140 an hour, traveling-nurse agencies and hospital-industry leaders say. Hospitalizations, which have set new records every day for two weeks, hit a fresh high of 85,836 on Nov. 23, according to the Covid Tracking Project. That is higher than any of the prior surges in the U.S., where hospitalizations—at their highest—were pushing the 60,000 mark.