COVID patients take up about 20% of state’s hospital beds

Percentage of total hospital beds occupied by COVID patients

There are currently 1,262 patients in Connecticut hospitalized with a coronavirus infection, according to data released Wednesday by the state.

As of Nov. 27, COVID-19 patients took up an average of 17.7 percent of the total hospital capacity in the state.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services this week released granular data about hospital utilization, showing the total number of beds by hospital, and the number of those beds taken up by COVID-19 patients.

In Connecticut, hospitals in Middlesex County are specifically burdened at the moment, according to an analysis of that data by a team at the University of Minnesota — 30.2 percent of all hospital beds are being used by COVID-19 patents.

On the other end of the spectrum is Tolland County, where less than 8 percent of hospital beds are taken up by COVID patients.

In New Haven County, COVID-19 patients are occupying 20.2 percent of the total number of available hospital beds. It’s 18.5 percent in Fairfield County and 19.34 percent in Litchfield County.

This data is supplied to the HHS weekly, and the most recent data is from Nov. 27. It’s possible — probable — that hospitals are significantly more overburdened than they were 12 days ago, considering the daily increase in COVID-related hospitalizations (there was an increase of 39 statewide announced Wednesday).

Disregarding COVID-19, 76.95 percent of all the hospital beds statewide were occupied as of Dec. 4, according to a different set of HHS data.

Across the Yale New Haven Health system — which includes Bridgeport, Greenwich and Yale New Haven hospitals, among others — there were 450 more patients on Tuesday than there would typically be this time of year, said Dr. Thomas Balcezak, chief clinical officer for Yale New Haven Health.

“The difference between this wave and the wave in spring is haven’t seen falloff in other areas of service (that was seen then),” he said. “People weren’t coming in with gall bladder attacks or signs of stroke. Now they are.”

To accommodate the increase, the Yale hospitals have had to be creative. For instance, Balcezak said, Yale has pediatric beds at Bridgeport Hospital’s Milford campus, some of which are now being used for adult non-COVID patients.

Another Yale hospital, Bridgeport Hospital, is looking into adding beds at the Milford campus to handle its overflow.

Looking at total capacity, Middlesex Hospital is specifically overwhelmed. HHS data lists the hospital as having 188 beds available on average, 173, or 92 percent of them occupied.

Beds in Hartford Hospital are 87.4 percent occupied, with Danbury Hospital right behind, with 80.2 percent occupied.

Pedro Mendes, who develops mathematical models designed to anticipate the resource needs of Hartford Hospital, said last week that he expects hospitalizations to rise through Dec. 14, and possibly through the New Year.

“The model predicts that there would be a peak of hospitalizations by Dec. 15,” he said.

When it released the hospitallevel data set, HHS said the goal was to provide context.

“With this data release, how hospitals are impacted by COVID-19 will be shown on a perhospital basis, allowing researchers, policymakers and others to have greater insights into local COVID-19 response efforts,” the agency said.