Reconfigure Colorado’s COVID hospitalizations – CBS Denver

DENVER (CBS4)– The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reported 890 hospitalizations of patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 on Friday: 682 unvaccinated and 208 vaccinated. But a closer look at the numbers, some of them are among those who are not hospitalized for COVID-19 but have tested positive.

(credit: CBS)

READ MORE: Todd Searles commits suicide in jail cell days ahead of wife’s murder hearing

“I think it’s important to understand that in general, public health data is collected, in a very standardized, systematic way across the country, and what we do is apply these black and white criteria to data that is often quite gray, ”said state epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy.

Colorado counts hospitalizations like other states.

“This is the standard process across the country, it is also the standard process that we have used for many years for hospitalizations associated with influenza. “

Hospitals trying to contain the pandemic are screening incoming patients.

“We test everyone who comes into our hospital whether or not they have symptoms of COVID,” said Dr. Heather Young, infectious disease physician and medical director of infection prevention at Denver Health Medical Center.

Other hospitals are doing it too.

(credit: CBS)

“Some people are going to have appendicitis and come for that reason, well, they’re going to get tested for COIVD and some of them are going to have asymptomatic infection and that type of person is going to count in the state’s numbers as being hospitalized with COVID, ”she added.

Patients are being tested to try to contain potential outbreaks. Some hospitals like Denver Health have patients who share rooms.

“Even though that’s not the reason for their hospitalization, hospitals really need to continue to maintain all of these infection control practices to ensure that this patient’s COVID-19 infection has not spread to through the hospital, ”said Dr Herlihy.

READ MORE: New Douglas County Board of Health approves face mask exemptions for schools

The question becomes how many are in the hospital for treatment for COVID-19. Colorado and thirteen other states take a deeper dive.

“We have a team of trained medical extractors who routinely review and review medical records because you can imagine this process is taking a long time,” Herlihy said. “It can take over an hour to review a single file and determine the cause of that person’s hospitalization. But we’re doing it on a sample of hospitalizations here in Colorado… 75% of them were due to COVID 19. ”

They explode it further by looking at the hospitalizations among the vaccinated.

“When we look at specifically vaccinated patients who are hospitalized with COVID-19, that number is smaller, but not significantly smaller, I would probably say in that 60.65% range.”

She said they had not tracked the percentage of those who were not vaccinated, but believed it would definitely be higher.

Dr. Young found a greater disparity at Denver Health Medical Center.

(credit: CBS)

“For several consecutive weeks, I looked at all the cases we have and quantified how many vaccinated patients are hospitalized, how many,” she said, explaining that she had examined patients in intensive care and on ventilators. and other information. “And it’s really amazing how much immunization protects against intensive care stays and also ventilation.”

When asked how many vaccinees had been admitted to the hospital for treatment for COVID-19, she replied, “This week it was about 30% of our vaccinated patients admitted with COVID who are showing symptoms. of COVID. “

When asked how many unvaccinated people are hospitalized for COVID-19 treatment, she estimated around 90%. Dr Herlihy stresses that the published data is consistent with that of the whole country.

“They’re collected the same way across the country and I really think it’s an important message here that we really need to have an apples-to-apples comparison so Colorado can’t count hospitalizations from. one way and the states of Georgia and Washington another way because we wouldn’t have an accurate picture of what’s going on in the country.

NO MORE NEWS: COVID or flu? New test can detect both coronavirus and influenza virus

A data page on the state’s website is titled “Hospitalized for COVID-19.” The accuracy of this sentence seems to be in question.