Covid-19 ICU hospitalizations are down 4.5% from their November peak

On Monday, Kate 11 carried a story titled ‘As hospitals near capacity, health care workers plead for public to help by taking precautions seriously‘. Kare 11 reported:

But, as I wrote recently, that “continued segment of the population that refuses to wear a mask” amounts to about 5% of Minnesotans, according to Carnegie Mellon Univeristy’s COVIDcast Real-time COVID-19 Indicators. The idea that this current surge in cases and hospitalizations is being driven by non-compliance with the mask mandate flies in the face of the data on compliance which we have.

It also the case that news on hospitalizations is more positive than Kare 11 presents. Data from the Minnesota Department of Health, seen in Figure 1, shows that, as of the seven days up to and including December 9th, total average ICU hospitalizations in the state are down 4.5% – or 51 beds – from their peak of the seven days up to and including November 21st. Capacity remains at 1,212, 34% down from November.

Figure 1: ICU hospitalizations in Minnesota, seven day moving average

Source: Department of Health

The story is much the same with hospitalizations generally. In the seven days up to and including December 9th, total average hospitalizations in the state are down 10.1% – or 694 beds – from their peak in the seven days up to and including November 10th.

Figure 2: Non-ICU hospitalizations in Minnesota, seven day moving average

Source: Department of Health

There is something interesting to note in both graphs. Just as the surge in Covid-19 hospitalizations was accompanied by a slump in the numbers of people in hospital without the virus, so the decline in Covid-19 hospitalizations we have seen recently is accompanied by a rise in non-Covid-19 hospitalizations.

This might support a suggestion I have made previously, namely that a lot of Covid-19 hospitalizations are people who would have been in hospital anyway but who happen to have Covid-19. Why else would it be that this year entering flu season when hospitalizations traditionally surge, the number of hospitalizations has fallen so dramatically? Figure 3, from the Department of Health’s latest Weekly Influenza & Respiratory Illness Activity Report shows that, this year, we are seeing near record low hospitalizations with flu.

Figure 3 

Source: Department of Health

This is something to watch closely in the next few weeks.

John Phelan is an economist at the Center of the American Experiment.