New data paints picture of COVID-19 hospitalization in Minnesota, across the nation
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Newly released data is painting a picture of the COVID-19 situation at each hospital. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published COVID-19 hospital data at the facility level for each week, going back to August.
“Number of patients for COVID-19 in the hospitals, in the ICU, number of staff bed, number of new admissions by age groups, lots of rich data,” said Dr. Pinar Karaca-Mandic, who is a professor at the University of Minnesota tracking COVID-19 data around the country. “Very interesting data”
Karaca-Mandic says the visualized data is critical in making the information easier to understand and use.
“If this information is available almost in real-time basis on a weekly basis, one can think of a lot of different ways from a policy point of view, for research allocations, for better staffing, for transferring, allocating resources in more targeted ways,” Karaca-Mandic said. “If you see if a hospital has a huge capacity problem, you can look around at the neighboring hospitals in the neighboring cities where should we transfer to the new hospital.”
The newly released data showed some key findings.
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Among them, across 26 reporting states, there are recently more than 46,000 people hospitalized for COVID-19 . The number of hospitalizations are currently the highest Minnesota has seen since the end of May. And the list of places also shows the areas in Minnesota with the highest percentage of COVID-19 patients using the overall number of hospital beds available.
"Minneapolis has 16 percent of their hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 for the week of Nov. 26. Whereas St. Paul, their average hospital is 31 of their beds are occupied,” said Karaca-Mandic.
The localized information will help specific communities determine what resources are needed in order to open schools for the economy.
There aren’t data released by many states — including Minnesota — that would show the length of stay for a patient and also the severity of the hospitalization.