Internal Documents Reveal COVID-19 Hospitalization Data the Government Keeps Hiddenhttps://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/30/929239481/internal-documents-reveal-covid-19-hospitalization-data-the-government-keeps-hid... NPR has obtained documents that give a snapshot of data the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services collects and analyzes daily. The documents — reports sent to agency staffers — highlight trends in hospitalizations and pinpoint cities nearing full hospital capacity and facilities under stress. They paint a granular picture of the strain on hospitals across the country that could help local citizens decide when to take extra precautions against COVID-19.
The documents show that detailed information hospitals report to HHS every day is reviewed and analyzed — but circulation seems to be limited to a few dozen government staffers from HHS and its agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health, according to distribution lists reviewed by NPR. Only one member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Admiral Brett Giroir, appears to receive the documents directly.
Withholding this information from the public and the research community is a missed opportunity to help prevent outbreaks and even save lives, say public health and data experts who reviewed the documents for NPR.
The daily reports show county, city and hospital-level details, as well as national analyses that HHS does not post online.
For instance, the most recent report obtained by NPR, dated Oct 27, lists cities where hospitals are filling up, including the metro areas of Atlanta, Minneapolis and Baltimore, where in-patient hospital beds are over 80% full. It also lists specific hospitals reaching max capacity, including facilities in Tampa, Birmingham and New York that are at over 95% ICU capacity and at risk of running out of intensive care beds.
Around 24% of U.S. hospitals are using more than 80% of their ICU capacity, based on reporting from nearly 5,000 "priority facilities," and more hospitals have joined their ranks in recent weeks.
Hospitalization data is invaluable in looking ahead to see where and when outbreaks are getting worse ... the local and hospital-level data HHS is collecting would be very useful to researchers and health leaders. "That stuff isn't easy to find at a national level," he says, "There's no one place [publicly] you can go to get all that data."
But what's missing for this kind of planning, he says, is "exactly the information" that appears in the internal report. ... it's clear vital data is flowing into HHS daily. "But sharing with the public seems to be an afterthought,"HHS tells NPR that more than 800 state-level employees have access to the daily hospitalization data it gathers, but only for their own state ... without a larger view into national or regional data some states, like Tennessee, which has eight bordering states, are missing out on valuable regional data
... "Our goal is to be as transparent as possible, while still protecting 'privacy'," an HHS spokesperson wrote in an email to NPR. .. This is a peculiar concern because the reports contain no individual patient data to raise a 'privacy' issue.
... Health experts say the data quality was compromised by a controversial shift in data collection from CDC to HHS in July, and that the issues with data quality have not been fully resolved.
Hospitals have had to adjust to onerous new reporting requirements, and the hospital data is no longer checked and analyzed by seasoned epidemiologists and other experts at CDC.
https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=7278119-HHS-Daily-COVID-Hospitalizations-Summary-Report-------------------------------------'
US Coronavirus Cases Hit Record Daily High and Experts Warn Daily Death Rates Will Triple By Mid-Januaryhttps://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/10/30/health/us-coronavirus-friday/index.htmlFor the first time, the United States added cases faster than one every second on Thursday, Johns Hopkins data shows.
... There were 88,521 new cases of the coronavirus reported in the US on October 29, according to data from Johns Hopkins University -- 9,540 more cases than Wednesday.
In total, there have been 8,944,934 cases and at least 228,656 deaths in the US -- 971 of them on Thursday, JHU data shows.
...The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine says it is most likely that by the middle of January, 2,250 Americans will be dying every day from the coronavirus -- three times more than the current rate.
And it could get much worse.
"If states do not react to rising numbers by re-imposing mandates, cumulative deaths could reach 514,000 by the same date," the IHME said in its latest forecast.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=daily-deaths&tab=trend"The fall/winter surge should lead to a daily death toll that is approximately three times higher than now by mid-January. Hospital systems, particularly ICUs, are expected to be under extreme stress in December and January in 18 states."
... "We are at an unsustainable growth rate," said Dr. Jason Mitchell Thursday. Mitchell is the chief medical officer at Presbyterian Healthcare Services, which operates nine regional hospitals in New Mexico.
Mitchell says the state's rate of case growth is averaging about 5% a day, which would result in catastrophic numbers if there's no effort to change the trend. "By December, we would have so many cases that we would be in MASH tents," Mitchell said during a state health briefing.
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... if your not rich, you're 'little people' ...Don Jr. Dismisses Coronavirus Deaths: ‘The Number Is Almost Nothing’https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/10/30/trump-jr-coronavirus-deaths-nothing-433665... Roughly 1,000 Americans died from the disease on Thursday, as Trump Jr. appeared on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s show to downplay the U.S. death toll. And among those who survive coronavirus, many have long-term damage to vital organs and lingering chronic symptoms.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, falsely claimed on Thursday that the number of Americans dying from the coronavirus amounts to “almost nothing.”
... Those remarks resemble other misleading or outright untrue rhetoric put forth in recent days by President Donald Trump, who has been increasingly dismissive of the pandemic’s threat ahead of Election Day. “More Testing equals more Cases. We have best testing. Deaths WAY DOWN,” he tweeted on Friday morning.
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