Hospitals and long-term care facilities are so short staffed that many are compelling Covid-positive doctors and nurses to return to work, arguing that bringing back asymptomatic or even symptomatic staff is the only way they can keep their doors open amid a spike in hospitalizations.

The practice, allowed by the most recent federal guidance, underscores the dire situation in which many facilities find themselves as more than 120,000 people nationwide are now hospitalized with the virus — almost three times the total from Thanksgiving when Omicron was first detected.

“We don’t have good choices — or the choices that we want,” said Shereef Elnahal, the CEO of University Hospital in Newark, N.J. and the state’s former health commissioner. “Our staffing situation has been the worst it’s been since the spring of 2020.” Three hundred out of 3,700 workers at his hospital are out, many infected with Covid-19.