Weekend Update: Literally Updates

Checking in on Chicago and New York

First up on today’s weekend update, we touch base with Chicago and their hospital issues. When I first wrote about this a couple weeks ago, Chicago had 619 covid-positive patients in their hospital system and had just announced a vax pass to help save their hospital system. Here’s what the data looked like:

At the time, 8.7% of beds were taken by a covid-positive patient and the hospital was 85% full. However, since then covid hospitalizations have skyrocketed by nearly 1,000 patients, now topping 1,600. Surely the hospitals are in trouble handling all these extra people, right?

In reality, the hospital is LESS BUSY today than it was then, at only 82.6% full. Why hasn’t total occupancy risen along with the number of covid patients, which is now higher than at any point in the pandemic? Digging into New York’s data might shed some light on the problem.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul released data Friday breaking down COVID-19 hospitalizations by those who were admitted due to the virus and those who were admitted for other reasons but were found to have the illness.

According to the provided statistics, in approximately 43% of hospital admissions "COVID was not included as one of the reasons for admission."

According to the same data set, a staggering 51% of COVID-19 hospitalizations in New York City were not due to COVID-19 or related symptoms. The numbers show that 3,060 patients were hospitalized for reasons other than COVID-19, while only 2,992 were admitted due to the illness.

This is more powerful evidence that many “covid hospitalizations” are people who would be in the hospital anyway (perhaps to have a baby or routine procedure, or because they are frail and would typically be in the hospital during winter). This is why total occupancy remained flat in Washington, regardless of the number of covid patients in the system.

We saw the same thing in Tennessee last winter:

Many covid restrictions are based on the idea that a surge in covid patients will mean a surge in total hospital occupancy. But because so many “covid hospitalizations” are in the hospital for other reasons, that’s not the case at all. Chicago is just the latest example.