State’s hospitals see drop in COVID patients
Number lowest in 3 weeks, data shows
For the first time in three weeks, the number of patients with COVID in Connecticut hospitals has dropped, potentially offering hope that the latest surge, one of the worst since the start of the pandemic, is slowing.
The state reported Thursday that the number of patients hospitalized with COVID dropped by 22 for a total of 1,917. The decline comes as Connecticut neared a new pandemic high for hospitalizations, falling just short of the 1,972 patients recorded on April 22, 2020.
“Again, one day does not make a trend but … ICU and ventilators tend to lag hospitalizations, we are hoping those numbers go down in the next week or so,” said Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist for Hartford HealthCare, who noted there was a slight day-over-day increase in the number of patients on ventilators and in intensive care.
The single-day drop in hospitalizations comes after a sharp rise of as many as 110 new patients a day late last week.
Wu said he wanted to avoid doing “microscopic epidemiology,” noting they cannot make predictions day-to-day what might happen with the pandemic.
The state on Thursday also
reported a small drop in the positivity rate when 9,604 cases were found in 47,380 new tests for a rate of 20.27 percent.
“I think if you take the 1,000-foot overview, you are starting to see again a decrease in the rate of rise and that’s very important,” Wu said. “If you think of it like you are riding a roller coaster, we may be nearing the top at this point, at least for this curve.”
Dr. Ajay Kumar, chief clinical officer for HHC, said the hospital network also continues to see a sizable portion of people coming in for unrelated reasons, such as a heart attacks or broken bones, who are positive for COVID-19.
“We test everybody who comes to the hospital to make sure our colleagues are safe and we are providing safe care to our patients as well,” Kumar said.
While the total number of hospitalizations dropped, the percentage of patients who are fully vaccinated rose slightly to 32.8 percent, the highest it has been since the state started providing this figure in early December.
In the past week, there have been about 11,000 more breakthrough infections, which are cases involving people who have been fully vaccinated for at least two weeks, the state data shows.
The total number of breakthrough infections reported last week represents about 38 percent of all new cases during that time.
Roughly 4.5 percent of the more than 2.5 million people fully vaccinated in Connecticut have tested positive for COVID-19, an increase from about 2 percent in late December.
However, hospital patients who have been fully vaccinated often suffer less severe symptoms, health professionals said. Now more than a year into the vaccine effort, medical experts have said those with boosters tend to have the least severe symptoms.
Rick Martinello, chief of infection prevention at Yale New Haven Health, said many COVID hospitalizations — about 40 percent throughout the Yale system — are incidental.
“They're coming in, but are coming in for reasons other than a principal diagnosis of COVID,” he said, calling the increase in incidental infections an indication of “how pervasive COVID is in our community right now.”
Martinello said the average age of patients experiencing the most severe COVID reactions has been dropping. Earlier in the pandemic, older patients needed the most care. That’s not as true any more, he said.
“It's not clear if there's something that has been changing with the virus, making those individuals more susceptible,” Martinello said. “Is it the behavior of that population and how they may be using masks, etc.? Or is it because that population is still mostly unvaccinated? It’s probably all the above with the last one being the principal driver.”