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Despite Rising COVID Cases In NY, Hospitalizations Have Yet To Spike
By
Fred Mogul
Published Oct 30, 2020
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Lev Radin/Pacific Press/Shutterstock
By
Fred Mogul
Published Oct 30, 2020
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Coronavirus cases have been climbing steadily over the past month in New York, but while local public health leaders are watching carefully, they say so far it’s a good sign that relatively few people are getting sick enough to go to the hospital.
“Same as last week, no real changes,” texted one front-line doctor at Maimonides Medical Center, in Borough Park, which has had one of the highest rates of positive COVID-19 tests in the state and is in Brooklyn’s designated red zone.
Jason Molinet, a spokesman for Northwell Health, the state’s largest hospital network, said they have 113 people hospitalized with COVID-19 across 19 of its hospitals. “Our peak in October was 135, and September we were under 100 the whole time – that’s compared with 3,500 COVID patients at the peak last spring.”
Statewide, there are only around 1,000 patients in the hospital, which is fewer than in less populous states, like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. That’s first and foremost because cases are relatively low, overall, but it also appears that so far people with severe COVID-19 cases represent a smaller proportion of positive cases in New York than elsewhere.
It’s not clear exactly why that is, based on available data, but epidemiologists say the likeliest explanation is better protection — especially for the elderly.
“My first guess is that the most vulnerable are still being very careful,” said Dr. Jessica Justman, an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist at Columbia University. “I would hazard that older individuals and people who know that they are at risk of more severe COVID are staying in and limiting their exposures, and with new cases involving younger people, not as many of them will require going to the hospital.”
Another leading theory is that New Yorkers are doing better than many of their counterparts at wearing masks and social distancing.
“People are much more likely than they were in the spring to acquire COVID from someone who's wearing a mask, or while they themselves are wearing a mask,” said Dr. Denis Nash, a former CDC and city Health Department epidemiologist who teaches at CUNY. “And that could result in a lower dose of the virus and a milder course of infection.”
In other words, even if masks and distancing don’t completely prevent transmission, those measures apparently reduce the amount of coronavirus inhaled when exposed to someone who’s contagious. That, in turn, appears to blunt the impact of the virus, and could be one of the main reasons such a high proportion of New Yorkers who test positive are asymptomatic or only mildly ill.
New York State has around 2,000 people who’ve tested positive for COVID, on average each day over the past week, according to figures tracked by The New York Times. That’s twice as many as a month ago, but at 9.6 cases per 100,000, it’s still among the fewest in the country, per capita. The state’s neighbors, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania have rates 60% to 70% higher, and hotspots around the country like Wisconsin, Utah and North Dakota, have rates roughly 500%, 700%, and 1,300% higher, respectively.
Once patients are in hospitals, they also appear to be dying at significantly lower rates than they were in the spring, because doctors have a much better understanding of COVID-19 and how to treat it. The disease is still very deadly, though. Even with a drop in mortality among hospitalized patients from 25.6% in the spring to 7.6% in the summer, according to a recent study, the coronavirus remains two to three times deadlier than the flu—and survivors can still suffer severe short- and long-term health problems.
Dr. Leora Horowitz, who authored the study on improving mortality rates, warns that the progress can be reversed. As cases mount in some areas, people will suffer worse outcomes if hospitals become overwhelmed.
“Hospital strain is important,” the NYU internist and population health specialist said.
The message, Horowitz and other public leaders said, is that a flattened curve doesn’t just stay flattened by itself: people need to continue to wear masks and limit interaction outside their immediate circles, especially inside.
“As we are seeing now in parts of this country and in Europe,” Horowitz said. “Hospitals are again becoming overcrowded, and mortality rates could worsen again.”
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COVID-19
hospital
Fred Mogul
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