Hospital Bed Use in Minnesota

Here is more data on hospital use in Minnesota, from this chart routinely put together by Dave Dixon.  Look at the black capacity line at the top–see that decline, why has that happened?   Here we are with a supposed hospital bed crisis and somehow we let capacity decline.  Or did we cause it to decline with vaccine mandates?  Now look at the red line at the bottom, bed use for CV-19 is a small portion of overall hospital bed use.  And while you are looking at that line, recall that we are basically having no flu, there typically would be significant flu hospitalizations during the late fall and winter, so the CV-19 bed utilization at least part of the year is just substituting for flu.

Here are some numbers, on June 1 we had total beds in the state of 8944.  Today we have 8507, a drop of 5%.  Out of those 8507 beds, as of Tuesday, 7673 were occupied or 90%.  That is pretty typical hospital bed utilization, in fact probably lower than hospital executives would like to see.  Out of the 7673, 960 were occupied by supposed CV-19 patients, a large percent of whom aren’t there for CV-19 treatment but had a positive test.  That is around 12.5%.  These charts and numbers help give you some perspective on the true state of hospitalizations.