More than 200 remain hospitalized with COVID in CT
Though some COVID metrics have been trending down in recent weeks, hospitalizations — often described by officials as a key indicator in decision making — remain well above pandemic lows.
While overall infections and deaths have declined, hospitalizations have hoovered above 200 for several weeks following a spike in overall COVID-19 cases brought on by the highly transmissible delta variant.
“Generally the peak of people hospitalized will lag the peak of the prevalence of the community, once we see it go down a bit in the community, it takes a few weeks for the hospitalization rate to go down,” said Dr. Rick Martinello, medical director of infection prevention at Yale New Haven Health.
Martinello said some of those hospitalized also require prolonged stays in intensive care, which can keep the tally of patients high for several weeks.
Through the weekend, the hospitalizations increased by a net of one patient for a total of 212. At the same time, the positivity rate of new COVID tests was 1.55 percent, according to the state’s data.
Heading into the colder months, which often drive up respiratory illnesses, overall hospitalizations are still considerably higher than pandemic lows seen in July, when a pandemic low of 25 patients statewide was recorded.
Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday he was not concerned about the hospitalizations levels right now in Connecticut.
“Look, we’ve been near the lowest in the country now for months. I feel pretty good with 90 percent of our adults having at least one shot. That’s a pretty good start,” Lamont said.
Cases have been declining, but the delta variant, which first started to significantly spread in Connecticut during the summer, remains present. The latest report from the Yale School of Public Health, issued last Thursday, shows all but one of the 322 cases they genetically sequenced were the delta variant.
“Delta definitely played a role,” Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist for Hartford HealthCare, said of hospitalization levels. “But guess what works against delta?
The vaccine. Delta is playing a role, but it is preventable.”
While hospitalizations jumped during the spike in cases brought on by the delta variant, the total number was far below the peak seen in early 2021. Experts and state officials have credited the state’s high vaccination rate as muting the devastating effects of the delta variant that were seen in other parts of the country, particularly southern states.
In hospitals, Wu said, the
majority of the patients continue to be unvaccinated. And as the level of care for a patient increases within the hospital from an intensive care unit stay to intubation and ventilation, the likelihood is even greater that the person has not been vaccinated, Wu said.
The tool to drop the hospitalization numbers, Wu said, is increased vaccination. “It has been and really is the way to drive down these numbers,” he said.
While some projections show hospitalizations continuing to slowly decline in the coming months, Wu said he believes the numbers may pick up as colder weather descends on the state.
“I assume when weather starts getting colder, when we start having holidays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and News Year’s, those numbers are going to trend up a little bit,” Wu said.