Hospital admissions went up by 20 percent last week. Since federal and state daily and weekly case rates are no longer available, this metric is the best measure currently available for tracking community levels.
About half of the counties in the U.S. — mostly in the West — appear to have low admission rates, while 8 percent are considered high.
Apart from hospital data, we also have wastewater surveillance. This measure suggests most surveillance sites are reporting higher virus levels, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has noted that sites began monitoring at different times, making this information relative to a specific location.
“We have wastewater data and we have hospitalization data, and then we have just lots of anecdotes,” William Schaffner, professor in the division of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, told The Hill. “My colleagues across the country, as I speak with them on conference calls, are all experiencing pretty much the same thing.”
Schaffner said he and his colleagues are seeing mostly vulnerable and older people being admitted to the hospital.
Despite the apparent rise in cases, the infectious diseases expert stops short of calling the current increase a surge.
“I’m reluctant to call it a surge, because we have used that term last season and the season before when we really had very large increases that stressed hospital systems severely,” said Schaffner. “We’re having a substantial seasonal increase. I don’t think we’ve reached the levels that we had last year.”
The latest federal data suggests hospital admissions are slowing down and emergency department visits due to coronavirus are dropping.
Read more at TheHill.com.
