[thu2111]

Not exactly.

Italy has never run out of ICU beds. There have been sporadic and garbled reports of temporary shortages in Lombardy specifically, alleviated by patient transfers and ward conversions, and some of those reports were contradictory (e.g. doctors or mayors saying they were rationing care but other more senior healthcare leaders saying they weren't).

The UK had a hospital that hit capacity temporarily but it only lasted 12 hours before transfers reduced the pressure again.

We'll be seeing a lot of activity like that in the next weeks - reports that hospitals are full, then they stop being full as more capacity is added or patients are rebalanced onto other hospitals. The assumption of total ICU exhaustion seems to have been based on the assumption of uniform case growth everywhere which isn't happening, and perhaps also an inability to quickly add capacity.