COVID-19 hospitalizations up in 29 states

COVID-19 hospitalizations — which are less sensitive to holiday-related data lags than positivity rates, case counts or deaths — are up in more than half the United States and doubled over the past two weeks in three states and Washington, D.C.

Hospitalizations for COVID-19 have increased 14 percent nationwide over the past 14 days, while case counts increased 153 percent in the same timeframe, according to HHS data presented by The New York Times

Nationwide, the seven-day average for COVID-19 hospitalizations was 77,851 as of Dec. 29. That's about 55 percent lower than the pandemic high recorded in January 2021 and 30 percent lower than the peak of the delta wave in late August 2021. 

The Christmas and New Year's holidays cause reporting gaps and backlogs throughout this week and next for testing, case and death numbers. Hospitalizations are the one data point that is less volatile to holiday slowdowns given that hospitals do not get holidays off.

Here are the 14-day changes for hospitalizations in each state, according to HHS data presented by The New York Times

District of Columbia: 168 percent

Louisiana: 118 percent 

Florida: 104 percent

Hawaii: 101 percent 

New Jersey: 73 percent 

Georgia: 63 percent

New York: 51 percent

Mississippi: 47 percent

Connecticut: 44 percent

Maryland: 44 percent

Alabama: 35 percent

Illinois: 35 percent

Virginia: 35 percent 

South Carolina: 31 percent

Texas: 27 percent

Delaware: 22 percent

Tennessee: 18 percent

California: 17 percent

Rhode Island: 17 percent

Massachusetts: 16 percent

Missouri: 13 percent

Oklahoma: 12 percent

North Carolina: 10 percent

Kentucky: 6 percent

Ohio: 6 percent

Kansas: 5 percent

Washington: 5 percent

Nevada: 4 percent

Indiana: 2 percent

Pennsylvania: -1 percent

West Virginia: -3 percent

Arkansas: -3 percent

Wisconsin: -5 percent

Oregon: -6 percent

New Hampshire: -12 percent

South Dakota: -12 percent 

Maine: -13 percent

Iowa: -13 percent

Minnesota: -15 percent

Arizona: -16 percent

Utah: -18 percent

Michigan: -20 percent

Colorado: -20 percent

North Dakota: -22 percent 

Idaho: -23 percent

Nebraska: -23 percent

Montana: -24 percent

New Mexico: -24 percent

Vermont: -25 percent

Alaska: -26 percent 

Wyoming: -36 percent

 

Other takeaways: 

1. Eight of the 29 states reporting increased hospitalizations have at least 25 percent of their hospitals reporting critical staffing shortages: Alabama, California, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and South Carolina.

2. Washington, D.C., Ohio, Delaware and Indiana report the most hospitalizations per 100,000 people — 54, 45, 44 and 43, respectively. 

3. Ashish Jha, MD, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health in Providence, R.I, is one expert who has encouraged greater focus on COVID-19 hospitalizations over cases to gauge virus transmission due to the lower severity of the omicron variant. 

4. During a Dec. 29 briefing by the White House COVID-19 Response Team, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he anticipates the low hospitalization-to-case ratio to stick once data settles. "In the United States, we are getting accumulation of data," he said. "However, the pattern and disparity between cases and hospitalization strongly suggest that there will be a lower hospitalization-to-case ratio when the situation becomes more clear."

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