As infection rates for the novel coronavirus rise, hospitals all over the United States are scrambling for vital equipment like ventilators and protective gear. But the health care system faces another urgent, less understood shortage: available ICU beds.

Many patients with COVID-19 can be treated in standard hospital settings. But the most severe cases require intensive care with specialized equipment, such as ventilators, and qualified staff to administer treatment. Currently, there are only 117,000 ICU beds in the country, meaning that critical care units could soon become a bottleneck for Americas sick and dying.

Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch estimates that the coronavirus could infect between 20% and 60% of the adult population globally. A Newsy analysis of hospital and population data found that even infection rates at the lower end of Lipsitchs projections would place a severe strain on hospital systems. At the higher end, nearly every American would be living in a region without enough ICU beds to handle the surge of patients in need of critical care.

Many hospitals in the U.S. have, on an annual basis, dealt with these types of surge conditions, said David Wallace, a professor of critical care and emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. But I dont think that any of them have really been prepared for the level of the intensity of what this represents today.

Wallace and his colleagues divided the country into 326 regions based on where people receive emergency medical care. Using those regions, and publicly available data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Newsy was able to estimate the 12-month infection rate that a regions ICU could handle before becoming overwhelmed.