Thousands of nurses went on strike Monday at two of New York City's major hospitals after contract negotiations stalled over staffing and salaries nearly three years into the coronavirus pandemic.

The privately owned hospitals were postponing nonemergency surgeries, diverting ambulances to other medical centers, pulling in temporary staffers, and assigning administrators with nursing backgrounds to work in wards to cope with the walkout.

As many as 3,500 nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and about 3,600 at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan were off the job. Hundreds picketed, some singing the chorus from Twisted Sister’s 1984 hit “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” outside Mount Sinai. It was one of many New York hospitals deluged with COVID-19 patients as the virus made the city an epicenter of deaths in spring 2020.

“We were heroes only two years ago,” said Warren Urquhart, a nurse in transplant and oncology units. “We was on the front lines of the city when everything came to a stop. And now we need to come to a stop so they can understand how much we mean to this hospital and to the patients.”

The union for nurses, the New York State Nurses Association, said they had to strike because chronic understaffing leaves them caring for too many patients.

Jed Basubas said he generally attends to eight to 10 patients at a time, twice the ideal number in the units where he works. Nurse practitioner Juliet Escalon said she sometimes skips bathroom breaks to attend to patients. So does Ashleigh Woodside, who said her 12-hour operating-room shifts often stretch to 14 hours because short staffing forces her and others to work overtime.

“We love our job. We want to take care of our patients. But we just want to d it safely and in a humane way, where we feel appreciated,” said Woodside, who has been a nurse for eight years.

The hospitals said they had offered the same raises — totaling 19% over three years — that the union had accepted at several other facilities where contract talks reached tentative agreements in recent days.

Montefiore said it had agreed to add 170 more nurses. Mount Sinai’s administration said the union’s focus on nurse-to-patient ratios “ignores the progress we have made to attract and hire more new nurses, despite a global shortage of healthcare workers that is impacting hospitals across the country.”

The hospitals said Monday that they had prepared for the strike and were working to minimize the disruption.

“We remain committed to seamless and compassionate care, recognizing that the union leadership’s decision will spark fear and uncertainty across our community,” Montefiore said. “This is a sad day for New York City.”

Mount Sinai called the union “reckless.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul urged the union and the hospitals late Sunday to take their dispute to binding arbitration. Montefiore’s administration had said it was willing to let an arbitrator settle the contract “as a means to reaching an equitable outcome.”

The union did not immediately accept the proposal. In a statement, it said Hochul, a Democrat, “should listen to the frontline COVID nurse heroes and respect our federally-protected labor and collective bargaining rights.”

Both hospitals had been getting ready for a walkout by transferring patients, including intensive-care newborns at Mount Sinai.

Montefiore and Mount Sinai are the last of a group of hospitals with contracts with the union that expired simultaneously. The Nurses Association had initially warned that it would strike at all of them at the same time — a potential calamity even in a city with as many hospitals as New York.

But one by one, the other hospitals struck agreements with the union as the deadline approached.

BELLEVUE, Wa. — Even as they're learning more about defeating COVID-19, doctors are up against another contender.

"When the vaccine came out and we felt everybody felt that the pandemic was ending or going to end soon, but now, you know, another year has dragged on and, and we really don't see the end in sight," said Dr. Radha Agrawal, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Overlake Hospital in Washington State.

The second contender being a pandemic of misinformation, or as the World Health Organization calls is an infodemic: “false or misleading information” that “causes confusion and risk-taking behaviors that can harm health” and “leads to mistrust in health authorities.”

Dr. Agrawal and Dr. Ed Leonard, an infectious disease physician at Overlake, say they are battling misinformation daily in interactions with COVID-19 patients, when they argue about their treatments or don't believe their diagnosis.

"Every day, we're learning something new about the pandemic, and sometimes, what we learn kind of makes what we said yesterday obsolete," said Dr. Leonard, "and so, that kind of leads to a confusion in the public of all the way that you just said yesterday, this now we're doing this."

"They have their mind made up, they've thought about it and they've decided, and they really don't value my input in terms of what they should do," said Dr. Agrawal.

From doctors to hospital leaders, this "infodemic" weighs heavily on the hearts and minds of those in healthcare.

"We see people coming in actually angry when they get diagnosed with COVID because they say COVID, isn't real, you're making it up, you're you're doing this only for profit," said CEO of Scripps Hospital, Chris Van Gorder.

"I've heard some people use the word that we've, in some ways, been villainized, I wouldn't say that. I would say that we've been forgotten," said Dr. Agrawal.

Even with the surgeon general declaring misinformation a significant public health challenge, the pushback from patients continues with no clear solutions of how to drown out the false information regarding COVID-19, leaving healthcare workers to deal with this problem at the patients' bedsides.

"It would be very easy as a provider with our morale and fatigue to kind of snap back and that is the last thing we need to do," said Dr. Leonard.

"You see them every day and you take care of them everyday and they become part of your family and it's hard to kind of hold a grudge in a sense," said Dr. Agrawal.

"I'm still going to take care of you and I'm still going to hope that you do get better," she said.

As year three of the pandemic has begun, these doctors want us to know that they will continue the fight for our lives, against all odds, just like they have done since day one.

"It's really seen patients hoping for that improvement, really hoping for those stories, where we made a difference. That is really what gets us to work every day," said Dr. Agrawal.

OMAHA, Neb. —

Doctors and nurses in the ICU are approaching two full years of pandemic pressure. But public support for frontline workers has taken a back seat.

"We're here to help, but we also need you to help. We also need the public to help," said Haleigh Seizys, an ICU nurse at Nebraska Medicine.

As the pandemic rolls into a third year, that help can be as simple as sending donuts.

"You feed my nurses and they'll be happy," said Kim Olson, an ICU charge nurse at Bergan Mercy in Omaha, Nebraska.

But ICU nurses say you can make the biggest difference by taking precautions to mitigate hospitalizations.

"For the past two years, our world has honestly been turned upside down," said Olson.

But the days of banging pots and pans to thank our health care heroes are bygone, while the virus is as vicious as ever.

"I can't speak to my patients, because they're struggling so much. I've had way more experience with death in two years, than I ever thought I would in a lifetime," said Seizys, who feels public support for doctors and nurses has plateaued. "I wish that people could understand the exhaustion of just the overworked staff."

Some people do, especially those who have witnessed the crush of COVID-19 first-hand.

"We have had phenomenal care," said Amy Crosby. Her 1-year-old has Down syndrome and is hospitalized with COVID-19 right now. "I don't think some of the health care people take credit for all that they do for the families."

As a nurse herself, Crosby appreciates how health care workers put on a brave face for patients and frightened families.

"I feel like they've just been my good friends or my girlfriends through this whole process," said Crosby.

Patients, like family members, recognize what their nurses are going through. Marvin Brinkman was in the ICU at Bergan Mercy last month.

"The ICU stay really showed me the pressure that a lot of the nurses and doctors were under," said Brinkman, who had brain surgery and said there were COVID patients in the unit.

Some fear those pressures of the pandemic could cause mistakes in high-stakes environments.

"I think that that's always a concern," said Brinkman. "I could tell that they were stretched thin."

Those on the front lines say advertising our appreciation is more important than ever, as health care workers leave the profession in droves.

"We need those very skilled nurses taking care of us, otherwise we're going to be regretting it," said Brinkman.

For nurses, the exhaustion they’re experiencing right now is unprecedented. It is spurred in part by mandatory overtime.

"Every day continues to get harder," said Olson. As cases rise, support seems to be slipping away. “From an ICU standpoint, we're drowning, emotionally and physically."

Even so, they continue to show up, shift after shift.

"You don't lose the passion for nursing," said Olson.

They say a simple 'thank you' can sustain them during their darkest days.

"We have seen the most amazing support from both patients, families and friends."

Related video above: National Guard could be called up to help hospitals, New Hampshire governor says

With Michigan's COVID-19 case and hospitalization numbers hovering near all-time highs, the federal government will send doctors, nurses and others to support certain hospitals, the state health department said Wednesday.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had asked for help, and the federal government agreed to "send two medical teams to local hospitals to relieve doctors and nurses as they treat COVID-19 and other patients," Michigan's health department said.

The 44 medical personnel — including doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists — will be split between Dearborn's Beaumont Hospital outside Detroit, and the Spectrum Health System in Grand Rapids, the state health department said.

The teams will arrive next week "and begin treating patients immediately, providing support for the next 30 days," the department said.

"I'm grateful that the federal government has granted our request to provide much-needed relief to the health care personnel who have remained on the front lines of this pandemic," Whitmer said Wednesday.

Michigan is reporting more new cases per capita than any state

Though COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the United States dropped off at the tail end of a summer surge, they've risen over the past few weeks.

Michigan — along with some other states that weren't initially hit as hard as the South in the summer surge — has especially been under pressure.

Michigan recently reported its highest seven-day average of new daily cases for the pandemic, at 8,793 on Nov. 19. As of Thursday, the average was 8,470 a day — still more than double where the average was at the end of October, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

About 54.4% of Michigan's population was fully vaccinated as of Wednesday — tied for 27th among the 50 states for that metric, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of Thursday, Michigan was reporting more new cases per capita over the last week than any other state, with Wisconsin, Minnesota and New Hampshire not far behind, according to JHU data.

The number of COVID-19 patients in Michigan hospitals was 4,104 on Friday, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

That figure has generally risen since mid-July, and could soon rival Michigan's highest number of the pandemic: 4,468 on Nov. 30, 2020.

"Our teams are so burned out and struggling to keep up with the amount of patients coming through the emergency rooms, and the difference now is just the level of their sickness is so much greater in severity," David Claeys, president of Beaumont's Dearborn hospital, told CNN affiliate WXYZ.

Cases are generally rising in the US

Statistics are expected to be distorted over the next few days because many states did not report numbers on Thanksgiving. But as of Wednesday — the day before Thanksgiving — the country averaged 95,758 new COVID-19 cases each day across seven days, according to JHU data.

That's still below the summer 2021 peak of 171,123 daily reached on Sept. 13, but it has generally risen since late October, when the average dipped to near 70,000 a day, according to JHU data.

More than a third — 32,328 — of the country's average of new daily cases as of Wednesday was in the 12 states that the U.S. Census Bureau says comprise the Midwest.

More than 52,900 COVID-19 patients were in U.S. hospitals as of Friday, according to HHS. That's well down from a summer 2021 peak of 103,896 on September 1, but the figure is up from November 9, when it had dipped to around 48,600.

ICU beds are more than three-quarters full around the country, more than one in seven of them for COVID-19 patients, according to HHS.

More people need to get vaccinated, Fauci says

The latest uptick in cases is "not unexpected," as people spend more time inside during the cold-weather season and as immunity wanes, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN on Sunday.

And what happens with COVID-19 in the U.S. over the next couple of months depends on what Americans do, including whether more of the population gets vaccines and booster shots, Fauci told CNN on Friday.

"Right now, we have a tool, a very effective tool," he said Friday. "We have too many people ... who are eligible for vaccination, who are not vaccinated. We've got to get them vaccinated. There's no reason whatsoever not to vaccinate them."

About 59% of the total U.S. population is fully vaccinated, and 69.7% have received at least one dose. Among those eligible — people at least 5 years old — 74.1% received at least one dose, according to the CDC.

But that leaves more than a quarter of the eligible population — about 81 million people — without at least one dose, a CNN analysis of CDC data shows.

Unvaccinated people face a far greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people do, and the gap is even greater in terms of risk of hospitalization or death, according to the CDC.

Unvaccinated people were six times more likely than fully vaccinated people to test positive for COVID-19 and 14 times more likely to die of COVID-19, according to CDC data published Monday.

Fauci on Friday urged adults to get boosters at the recommended interval after full vaccination, saying they increase the level of protection "dramatically."

"You get a booster now, you can get into the winter and have a higher degree of protection," he said. "That's the reason why we're pushing so hard for people to: A) Get vaccinated in the first place if you're not vaccinated; and B) If you have been vaccinated and you're six months or more following an mRNA or two months or more following the J&J, go get your booster. It really is important as we enter into this colder, winter season."

LOUISVILLE, Ky. —

A team of nurses in a COVID-19 unit at a Kentucky hospital came together for a ceremony to honor patients who died from complications of COVID-19.

“There was one week where we lost a person every day," said Brittany Dawson, a CNA at UofL Health-Jewish Hospital in Louisville.

Nurses gathered on a roof patio for a “rock cleansing ceremony,” writing the initials of patients they lost on a rock, saying a few words and placing the rocks inside a vase with water. At the end, a nurse poured the water over plants at the hospital.

“I didn't even know that I needed to cry so much until that happened,” Dawson said.

During the emotional ceremony, nurses held hands and comforted each other, much like they’ve done with patients suffering from COVID-19 since March.

“We’re holding their hand as they take their last breath,” CNA Amber Stull said. “They don't have anybody. They're alone and you can see that they're alone and scared.”

The nurses honored the patients for putting up a tough fight with the deadly virus and in many instances having to do so alone.

Now, the nurses must continue their own daily fight as the pandemic continues and the number of cases and deaths from COVID-19 climb.

“It’s emotionally draining. We’re doing everything we can here,” said Shona Neal Smith, RN. “Usually you go home physically drained. This is that times five, sometimes 10.”

Watch the video above to learn more.

With demand for travel nurses through the roof, staffing agencies and nurses are feeling the pressure.

“I've been a nurse for 10 years, I've never seen anything like this before, said emergency room nurse Abigael Kaszar. “And it's, I mean, it's just something for the books. It's just crazy.”

Kaszar works through Aya Healthcare and she was at three hospitals over the past year, including one in New York City at the height of the area’s virus outbreak.

Kaszar says she's always keeping an eye on open ER positions. At the end of spring, there were a couple hundred. Now, there are over 4,000.

Another staffing agency, Travel Nurse Across America, tells us their requests from facilities are up 175% year over year.

The agency says it's because hospitals want staff that can jump right in.

“Being able to go from one hospital to another, and to understand and learn the different policy and procedure very, very quickly is difficult. And so these nurses are very talented and can come in and start working on a dime,” said Jill Eliassen, VP of Clinical Services at Travel Nurse Across America.

Kaszar is now at a hospital in California, where she says the ER is just overwhelmed.

COVID-19 patients who get discharged can't always go home, but other facilities they'd normally go to are full, so they stay in the hospital longer. The intensive care unit fills up too.

Patients who have nowhere else to go trickle down to the ER, which still has ambulances and other new patients coming in.

All of this is happening while hospitals are trying to isolate COVID-19 patients from others.

“It's just very busy and these people are just so sick, and it's a really big challenge keeping up. It's an emotional challenge, it's sad and it's scary and it's, I mean, so many of these infections were preventable. You feel so much regret and you feel sad for these people,” said Kaszar.

Travel Nurse Across America is encouraging short breaks between contracts because their nurses are getting burnt out.

“These nurses are also having to be psychiatrists and counselors and support for family members that are in a hospital due to COVID and aren't able to be with their loved ones,” said Kathy Kerstiens, Sr. VP of Client Services at Travel Nurse Across America.

The agency thinks the demand for travel nurses won't let up until at least mid-summer, when they can finally get more relief.

A mother is back home in Texas after a long battle with COVID-19 in an Oklahoma City intensive care unit.

Devisha Long credits her nurses for getting her home. But, she said, it has been a long journey.

She was flown by helicopter from Dallas to OKC. She was placed in a medically-induced coma at Integris Baptist Medical Center and was in this condition for nearly a month. She became a mother during her hospital stay.

“I surprised them. Oh, man, they were so excited,” she said. “You know, everybody was happy.”

Long survived COVID-19 thanks to the innovative extracorporeal membrane oxygenation treatment. This week, she finally returned home to her family in Dallas. Her nurses watched the tender moment while huddled around an iPhone.

“It was freaking awesome! I got chills. I cried, and I don’t cry. It was a breath of fresh air,” the nurses said.

Their former patient hugged her sweet daughters for the first time in months.

While Long was in a coma, Nurse Manager Rebecca Mitchell said she was very sick and was pregnant.

“And then they had to do an emergency C-section before she came to us,” Mitchell said.

“When I finally woke up, the only way I knew I wasn't pregnant is because one of the nurses from the other hospital had made a collage of the baby, and I seen him line up on the wall, and I looked and I was like, That's my baby,” Long said.

She eventually woke up from her coma, holding her baby girl.

“When I first held her and I was like, I can't believe, you know, this is you,” she said.

For the nurse team at Integris, they’ve been running nonstop, experiencing tragedy treating COVID-19 patients.

“It truly has been a hellacious year. I've seen more death. This just this past year than I have in the 10 years I've been a nurse,” Mitchell said.

But this brief moment offered a change from the sad realities of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We all cried. I think we all teared up, because just that those are those moments that you, you need to kind of help rebuild to remind you why we do what we do,” she said.

They remember why they continue their work.

“Thank you for your positivity, thank you for encouraging me. You really helped me to remain strong,” Long said. “Even in the dark times of me being alone, y'all really did an amazing job and I just want to tell you how to continue to do the same because you're touching lives and making a difference."

Long is still recovering from COVID-19, going to appointments in Dallas. As for her newborn, she’s at a Dallas hospital until she can come home.

FLORENCE, Ky. —

As another surge of COVID-19 pushes across the region, nurses are finding most of the latest patients to be very sick, unvaccinated and many have a misconception in common.

“They still don’t believe that it’s real,” said St. Elizabeth nursing supervisor Lee Ann Ernst. “People will say, ‘I didn’t think this was going to hit me. I didn’t think I was going to get it.’”

Ernst has been working with COVID-19 patients since the beginning of the pandemic.

“In the past 10 days, two weeks, our numbers have just skyrocketed again,” she said.

The delta variant is blamed for the dramatic increase.

The Northern Kentucky Health Department reports 117 new cases and 10 deaths overnight between Monday and Tuesday.

The COVID-19 map of Northern Kentucky shows that nearly half of the region is now considered a red zone which indicates there have been 25 cases reported per 100,000 people.

“People, I guess, think they are immune from it even when they aren’t vaccinated,” said St. Elizabeth nurse Madison Otte.

Some people who did not believe the virus was real, changed their minds after they were hospitalized with it.

“It’s kind of a ‘come to Jesus,’ regretful, this is happening,” Otte said.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KSHB) - A group of Kansas City-area healthcare workers was in the right spot at the right time Wednesday.

The right spot just happened to be on a Hawaii-bound flight in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The right time just happened to be when a fellow traveler went into labor in the airplane bathroom.

“This lady just starts screaming, 'Oh my God, we need help, doctor, medical, oh my God,' she’s like freaking out," LAni Bamfield, a registered nurse at North Kansas City Hospital, said Friday in recalling the event.

Bamfield, along with two other neonatal intensive care unit nurses, a physician assistant and a family medicine doctor, took to social media to document their efforts to help a mother deliver her baby 27 weeks into term.

“We’re used to stressful situations, but not like this. In a controlled environment where we have equipment. So, we were very focused and we just looked up to the flight attendant and Amanda’s like, can we turn around to Sacramento, what’s closer, can we get somewhere now,” Mimi Ho, also a registered nurse at North Kansas City Hospital, said Friday.

At the time of the medical emergency, the flight still had three more hours of travel before landing in Hawaii.

“I think we were just kind of nervous that there was an emergency and we’re over the ocean and that like there was no where to go," passenger Tesha Thomas said.

As passengers learned of the birth, they began gathering items the medical professionals needed.

When the flight landed, medical staff were on the tarmac waiting to take mother and baby boy to the hospital.

“He’s stable, they don’t have a name yet since she wasn’t expecting to have a baby really, but the nurses and doctors have nicknamed him Jet at the hospital," Ho said.

This story originally reported by McKenzie Nelson on KSHB.com.

May 12 is the last day of National Nurses Week, and what a year it has been for them and other first responders who have been on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even with all the strides that have taken place to fight the virus and with national COVID-19 numbers declining in most states, nurses and doctors say they still find themselves struggling at times.

When asked how they were feeling at this time during the pandemic, nurses and doctors we spoke with replied with the following:

“Sometimes, I feel like I become numb to what’s going on or try to block it out,” said Kara McKee, an ICU nurse at a hospital in Colorado. “I just had a patient’s family member crying and that, for the last year, is what we’ve been dealing with. You’re sitting there and you’re taking care of a patient and you remember something that has happened the last year, and I just get emotional. It’s just hard not to have a breakdown.”

“I cry,” added Kathy Gallegos, another ICU nurse. “It’s OK because, again, we have each other to help us. I remember putting on my N95 mask for the first time in a couple months and just feeling my anxiety start to rise.”

“I think you can’t help but have a little bit of that at times,” said Dr. Adam Barkin, an emergency physician.

“When you can’t do anything as a physician you kind of have to take a step back and say, ‘Well, what did docs do for 2,000 years? What did we all do before we had antibiotics?' And it was, 'We were there,'” added Dr. James Hunt, a critical care physician. “It was that human experience of being there with someone. Caring always, even though we can’t cure.”

Has the vaccine changed how things operate inside the hospital?

“Well, I think yes. I think people have far more comfort,” said Dr. Barkin. “I think that everyone was nervous about any interaction you had with any person; whether it was a patient, a fellow physician, a nurse, because there were so many asymptomatic carriers of COVID and you just didn’t know.”

“I think they’ve improved,” added Gallegos. “It’s just sad when we start getting more of those patients in, but overall, I would say overall I think things have improved. I think it has improved morale in our unit.”

“I think we have a very special bond on our unit and if it weren’t for them, it would have been a more difficult year,” said McKee.

Do you see that light at the end of the tunnel? How does it look now compared to maybe back in December?

“The light? Yeah, I see it,” said Dr. Hunt. “I see it as 70% or so. More, hopefully, as more people are getting vaccinated.”

“We’re hopeful,” added Dr. Barkin. “And I think the vaccines will take us to that next real stage of normalcy which I think we all hope for. As James said, having those conversations is crucial and we’ll get there.”

There is an urgent need for more healthcare workers nationwide.

Recruiting firm NuWest Group is working to find 200 nurses before the end of this week. Specifically, they want intensive care unit (ICU) nurses who will travel to the hardest hit areas, like New York City.

“What all these facilities are gearing up for is this middle of April timeline, so the big rush to get these nurses to where they need to be before the peak hits,” said Mona Veiseh, President of NuWest Group’s Healthcare Division.

NuWest Group says it wants to speed-up nurses becoming licensed to work in other states. They did this in Washington state. New York is already willing to look at any licensure across the country.

Nurses are being paid more incentives to work where the greatest need is.

Mona Yeiseh says the pay rates for ICU nurses and registered respiratory technicians are the highest she's seen in her 14 years in the business. She's also seeing many nurses already answering the call to go where there is need.

“I have seen entire units lend groups of ICU nurses to other units across the country trying to get the nurses to where the outbreaks are the most significant,” said Yeiseh.

Another unprecedented measure – nurses and medical students are being fast tracked to work in hospitals earlier.

Some nurses in New Jersey are working in field hospitals for their final semester instead of going to school. Students at New York University’s school of medicine will start their internships at hospitals in the city three-months early.

NuWest Group has

information on its website

for any nurses willing to travel to respond to coronavirus needs.