Study: COVID Hospitalizations Exaggerated; 48 Percent Of Cases Are Mild

By Newsmax
Posted on 09/19/21 | News Source: Newsmax

A new study suggests the data on COVID-19 hospitalizations is exaggerated by the fact almost half of those hospitalized have mild of asymptomatic cases, The Atlantic reported.

Hospitalization data has been significant during the pandemic because those numbers tend to predict death totals, but they now might be losing meaning because of the testing of individuals coming to the hospital for other reasons, only to find they have mild or asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 to boot.

Hospitals may test all admissions for any reason for COVID-19, regardless of whether the stay at the hospital was due to COVID-19, and any patient in the hospital with the virus is recorded as a COVID hospitalization.

“As we look to shift from cases to hospitalizations as a metric to drive policy and assess level of risk to a community or state or country, we should refine the definition of hospitalization,” Tufts Medical Center’s Shira Doron, an infectious-disease physician and hospital epidemiologist and a co-author of the study, told The Atlantic.

“Those patients who are there with – rather than from – COVID, don’t belong in the metric.”