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."