Colorado’s COVID hospitalizations top November peak, but fewer being treated primarily for the virus
Colorado exceeded the delta wave’s peak for COVID-19 hospitalizations Wednesday, but fewer of the people hospitalized during the current omicron surge are being treated primarily for symptoms from the virus — though estimates vary widely on how many patients just happened to test positive after being admitted.
State epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy said 1,577 people were hospitalized statewide with confirmed COVID-19 as of Wednesday afternoon, which is one more hospitalization than when the delta wave peaked on Nov. 23. At the worst point of the pandemic, in early December 2020, 1,847 people were hospitalized with the virus.
“Our hospitals obviously continue to be under significant strain,” she said during a news briefing.
But the fast-spreading omicron variant that has sent new infections skyrocketing in Colorado is less likely to cause severe illness than the delta variant, which drove the state’s fifth wave.
Colorado currently has more beds available in intensive-care units than it did during that wave, said Scott Bookman, the state’s COVID-19 incident commander. An average of 91% of intensive-care beds and 93% of general hospital beds statewide were in use over the last week.
Herlihy said the state estimates about 65% of current COVID-positive patients are in the hospital because they have the virus, with COVID-19 either contributing to the hospitalization or playing no role at all for the others.
In previous waves, 80% to 90% of patients who had COVID-19 were hospitalized because of complications from the virus, she said.
UCHealth and Denver Health have reached almost the opposite conclusion about why the majority of their COVID-19 patients are there, reporting 60% to 65% came to the hospital for some other reason and were then found to have the virus.
It’s possible that those hospitals are seeing a different mix of patients than those in other parts of the state, or that they and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment are using different methods of classifying patients.
Whether a hospitalization would have been avoided but for COVID-19 isn’t always easy to parse. A person who broke their leg skiing and happened to test positive with an asymptomatic infection is clearly an incidental hospitalization. A person with diabetes who comes in with a blood sugar crisis is harder to label, because viral infections can exacerbate chronic conditions.
Even when the virus isn’t the primary reason someone sought care, it creates difficulties, because those patients must be isolated from others and anyone caring for them needs to don full protective equipment before going in, Herlihy said. It also may cause complications that keep a person in the hospital longer, she said.
“In many cases, COVID-19 is continuing to complicate their hospitalization, extend their hospitalization,” she said.
Models project the current surge could peak as soon as this weekend, with about 2,100 people with COVID-19 hospitalized, Herlihy said, though an outside scenario shows the wave peaking later, with more than 3,000 hospitalizations.
So far, the percentage of tests coming back positive — generally the first weathervane to turn when a wave of COVID-19 is ramping up or coming to its end — has continued to increase, averaging 30% over the last week. There’s also no sign cases are dropping, with more than 12,000 new infections reported over the previous 24 hours on Wednesday.
In previous waves, the positivity rate would fall first, followed by cases, and a week or so later, hospitalizations.
The state is looking at local data, as well as what happened in South Africa, the United Kingdom and other states, Herlihy said. New York City just hit its peak in cases, and Colorado can learn from how long it takes hospitalizations to start declining there, she said.
In December 2020, at the pandemic’s peak for hospitalizations, conditions were different: businesses were operating under significant capacity restrictions, and Colorado had a statewide mask mandate in place — but the virus was less transmissible. In November 2021, during the peak of the delta wave, the restrictions were over, and a committee was preparing guidelines for implementing crisis standards in case Colorado should have to ration care.
Colorado currently has crisis standards in place to allow hospitals and emergency medical providers to stretch their staffing in ways that could mean less than optimal care for patients, but there’s no sign that rationing care is on the horizon, Bookman said. He noted that frontline health care workers have been dealing with the pandemic for almost two years.
“They’re going to need to surge again,” he said.
For all the latest Health News Click Here
For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News.
