The U.S. stands at 39 new cases per 100K per day, unchanged from a week ago.
Data source for this and other graphs of new case counts: Calculated from The New York Times. (2021). Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States. Retrieved 7/21/2022, from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data.” The NY Times U.S. tracking page may be found at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
Rising hospitalizations
U.S. daily new cases leveled off sometime around 5/21/2022. At that time, per the CDC COVID data tracker, we had an average of 3500 COVID-19 hospitalizations per day. As of July 18, we had 6200 COVID-19 hospitalizations a day, so hospitalizations are up about 75% since 5/21/2022.
Source: CDC COVID data tracker, accessed 7/21/2022
That increase is particularly bizarre as there has been no corresponding increase in deaths. So, somehow, there are a lot more people who need an inpatient level of care, but no more of them are actually dying.
I’ve been trying without success to find any useful information about the factors driving the increase in hospitalizations. I was able to show this is happening right across the country. It’s not specific to one or a few large states.
I picked up my first hint today, from the CDC’s published data on hospitalizations by age.
By eye, it appears that the recent increase in COVID-19 admissions is concentrated among the oldest old, those age 70 and older. This, per the CDC data tracker. This is based on data from (more-or-less) a census of U.S. hospitals, now required to report new COVID-19 admissions by age.
Source: CDC COVID data tracker.
That seems to be the limit of what CDC data can tell us. CDC tracks hospitalization rates by vaccination status, but those data are always two to three months out of date. Sometime this fall, they’ll be able to tell us what was happening this summer with respect to vaccination and hospitalization rates.
Beyond that, I have to scrounge what I can from the states. And there, the key question is whether this is somehow attributable to waning of immunity among the vaccinated and boosted population.
Near as I can tell, the answer to that is no. Here’s California, the largest U.S. state, showing hospitalization rates by vaccination status. If were able to scan across the actual rates, you’d see that, if anything, the apparent (observed) protection from being boostered is slightly higher now than it was a couple of months ago.
Source: State of California website.
Of the largest U.S. states, the only other one with usable information is New York. There, the story is much the same as California. There’s no evidence that the uptick in hospitalizations has anything to do with vaccination status, and, by inference, anything to do with declining immunity post-vaccination.
Source: New York State Department of Health
Well, this is more than I knew yesterday, at least. The rising hospitalizations are concentrated among the elderly (age 70+), and as far as I can tell, that has nothing to do with vaccination status of the hospitalized individuals.
Moreover, by inference, the average severity of illness of these cases must have fallen. Why? Because, by and large, almost all these deaths from COVID involved hospitalization prior to death. And while hospitalizations have increased, deaths have not. So my conclusion is that the average person admitted to the hospital for COVID today is not as sick as that person was two months ago.
Maybe this is just Roemer’s Law: A hospital bed built is a hospital bed filled. That has long been canon in health economics. It might even be true.
So it’s possible that as things have returned to normal, including hospital staffing levels, and hospital occupancy rates, maybe criteria for hospitalization have been relaxed. The at-risk older person presenting with moderate COVID who might have been treated on an outpatient basis two months ago is now admitted for a precautionary inpatient stay. Because, why not. It reduces the patient’s risk, and it fills an otherwise empty and unprofitable hospital bed. Although physicians — not hospitals — make the admitting decision, there’s surely some feedback from one to the other.
All I know for sure is that the increase in admissions over the past two months has been primarily in the elderly. And that it has not been associated with vaccination status. Nor has it been associated with increased deaths.
