COVID-19 Hospitalizations are Rising in the USA

COVID-19 cases have surged in the majority of states in the USA over the last two weeks.  Many governors claim that the surge in cases is mostly due to expanded testing.  A detailed look at the data shows that while some of the increase in case counts is due to expanded testing the majority is not.  The number of tests performed increased throughout April and May in the USA to near 600,000 tests per day, but have not been able to keep up with the surge in newly confirmed cases in June as states reopened too quickly, and individuals failed to follow masking and social distancing guidelines.  The graph below shows that for the largest 3 states, California (CA), Texas (TX), and Florida (FL), the percent of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests returning positive results (plotted as 7-day moving averages) have increased in CA to 6%, and surged to historic and alarmingly high levels near 16% in TX and FL. 


More importantly, the number of hospital admissions have risen dramatically in June as well.  Florida does not report the number of patients currently in hospitals, but only the cumulative total of hospital admissions for COVID-19.  From this data, we can calculate the number of new hospital admissions each day.  This number has risen from a low of 100 per day in early June to a recent 7-day average of 178 per day.  At this rate, many hospitals in FL are approaching full occupancy. TX and CA do report the number of patients currently occupying hospital beds.  This allows us to calculate the net number of hospital admits (new admits minus discharges) per day.  Over the last two weeks, this statistic has increased from a stable level near zero (admissions equal to discharges) to near full capacity in many TX hospitals and even a few CA hospitals.  This is not a good sign for governors who are pushing the theory that most of the new cases are young adults who are only mildly symptomatic and do not require much healthcare resources. 


To truly understand how seriously ill the newly admitted patients are we need to have an accurate census of ICU beds.  Unfortunately, states such as TX and FL do not track this consistently or accurately or have chosen to suppress such data.  In CA, this data is tracked and it is not pretty.  For an 8 week period from the end of April to mid-June ICU admits balanced discharges and ICU occupancy level was stable.  Since 6/16 it has gone up steadily over the last two weeks.  This does not bode well for other states. 


Diagnosis leads to hospitalizations, leads to ICU usage, leads to deaths 2-3 weeks later.  Death counts have begun to rise in TX and we forecast will soon rise in FL and CA as well.  All of this foretells a tragic summer for the USA.  The governors of some of the most infected states such as Arizona, California, and Texas are finally taking action to halt and in some cases to reverse reopening steps until their testing, contact tracing and selective isolation could catch up with this latest surge.  Hopefully, this will flatten the curve again, but it is also incumbent upon individuals to exercise more vigilance in terms of masking, social distancing, and washing hands appropriately. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Tale of Two Chinas and COVID-19

Image
SARS-CoV-2 is still ravaging the world 2.4 years after it first appeared in China.   For the first 2 years, many countries were vigilant in the defense of their people against the spread of COVID-19 but since early this year many countries have given up the fight assuming that with the wide availability of effective vaccines Omicron is mild enough to live with and too contagious to resist.   Taiwan and mainland China were both hit with the latest Omega subvariant BA.2 in March.  While China has continued with its zero-COVID policies, Taiwan gave up on its zero-COVID policy 4 weeks ago along with most other countries.  The results show how rapidly and explosively the virus can spread with few mitigations in place. Cases are growing exponentially in Taiwan with 17k new cases reported yesterday while China reported 7.4k.  If China had dropped its zero-COVID policy a month ago, it could have reported 1M new cases yesterday (scaling u
Read more

Could Florida be the Next Epicenter in the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Image
Florida Governor DeSantis has failed to recognize the seriousness of the exploding Covid-19 Pandemic in Florida.   His slow response and poor judgment have already cost many Floridians their lives and may cost many thousands more if he fails to act now.   State Infections/M Infections Deaths Mortality Mortality Coincident Lagged5 NY            2,361 45934 604 1.3% 3.6% NJ               994 8825 108 1.2% 5.1% LA               591 2746 119 4.3% 12.7% WA               486 3700 175 4.7% 8.8% MA               466 3240 35 1.1% 5.1% MI               366 3657 92 2.5% 8.4% CT               362 1291 27 2.1% 8.2% CO                  301 1734 31 1.8% 5.3% IL       
Read more

US Gives Up Controlling the Pandemic

Image
The US government's response to the novel coronavirus has been poor from day one.  And now Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff says the federal government has given up trying to control the Pandemic .  This admission of defeat is highly irresponsible and borders on the criminal.  Governments are elected to serve and protect the people and when they fail to do their number one job, they should be voted out.   The President and his national security advisors knew in early January, and the President  understood the seriousness of the novel coronavirus by late January – way before the public or other government officials knew.  (1)   Even if he did not want to panic the public, he should have convened a meeting of federal officials, governors, and top local officials secretly and warned them about the coming crisis.   A Manhattan Project for the Pandemic should have been set up in January to help the USA deal with this crisis.   He downplayed the virus.   (2)   The Pres
Read more