I think it's a factor of our late opening up & level of testing.
Our late opening up means less natural immunity but when the cases do hit it is in a largely vaccinated community.
Our high vaccination percentage means the relationship of cases to hospitalisations and ICU is reduced.
In countries on the continent, the vaccination percentage is significantly less than here, they have higher ICU capacity than we do but even that is reaching its limits in Germany, and we see curfews in Netherlands, lockdown of the unvaccinated in Austria.
Our extra vaccination percentage is 'worth' extra ICU beds in this battle, II don't know how many, 20, 50 ...
Realistically in the timeframe of this pandemic the government focused on the more tractable aspect - getting people vaccinated rather than the deeper issues with hugely increasing ICU capacity (which was increased by 50?).