Hospital-Acquired CV-19

This is an important issue which has been widely ignored by the media, and hidden by government agencies, including DOH.  With all the talk about running out of hospital capacity, etc., you would think it might be important to a) identify which cases were actually in the hospital for treatment and b) keep people from getting CV-19 in the hospital.  The first item is responsible for a very large number of hospitalizations supposedly due to CV-19, as many as 50% in the Omicron wave.  The second item is the shocker, according to federal data, around 10% of all hospital cases were actually contracted in the hospital.  Good infection control guys, those masks worked great.  And this is an undercount because of the 14 day definition, it is likely much higher.

Dave’s notes:

1. This chart illustrates the number of people with Hospital Onset Covid, defined as those who are hospitalized for a non-Covid reason, and only after 14 days test positive for Covid. It is really stunning that on 3/21/2022 that 9.6% of all Minnesota hospital Covid patients were classified as Hospital Onset Covid.  
2. On the chart the number of patients hospitalized with Hospital Onset Covid on any given day is shown in the blue curve. Hospital Onset Covid peaked at 84 patients on 11/19/2020 during the late 2020 Covid surge, and at 65 patients on 1/19/2022 during the Omicron surge. As Omicron has waned the number of Hospital Onset Covid patients has now fallen rapidly.
3. On the chart the red curve is the percent of all Covid beds in use that are Hospital Onset Covid. The average for the entire time period from 11/1/2020 to 3/1/2022 is 3.3%, before rising to 9.6% on 3/21/2022.
4. On 2/10/2022 we published a chart showing the number of people diagnosed with Hospital Onset Covid, here: https://healthy-skeptic.com/2022/02/10/getting-cv-19-in-the-hospital/. This post is an update showing current data, and adding a calculation of the % of all Covid beds in use that are Hospital Onset Covid.
5. The US Department of Health and Human Services publishes a database titled “COVID-19 Reported Patient Impact and Hospital Capacity by State Timeseries” here: https://healthdata.gov/Hospital/COVID-19-Reported-Patient-Impact-and-Hospital-Capa/g62h-syeh This database, in Column 9, contains a number series named “hospital_onset_covid”, defined as “Total current inpatients with onset of suspected or laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 fourteen or more days after admission for a condition other than COVID-19 in this state.” This data set for hospital onset covid, when filtered for Minnesota, and plotted is the primary data source.
6. Note that the number of Hospital Onset Covid patients is the total number of patients who have been hospitalized for 14 days, then test positive for Covid, and are still hospitalized on any given day. This is not the number of patients per day who test positive for Covid after having been hospitalized for 14 days.
7. Note also that Hospital Onset Covid patients are completely different from incidental Covid cases, where a  patient is admitted for a non-Covid condition and then immediately tests positive for Covid. It is believed that incidental Covid cases are a substantial fraction of daily Covid admissions, based on data published in other states.