Statewide COVID hospital numbers shrink while local numbers rise
Amy Ward, infections control manager at Kootenai Health, gears up during a March demonstration of how hospital staff will protect themselves from patients with personal protective equipment. While hospitalizations for COVID-19 symptoms have dropped locally since March, they have climbed locally. (PRESS FILE PHOTO/Courtesy of Kootenai Health)
Early Saturday morning, an unknown Idahoan got back unfortunate test results, becoming the 10,000th state resident to test positive since the pandemic began in mid-March. That number eclipsed 11,000 on Monday.
“Most recently, we’ve added the number of persons in the hospital everyday,” Dr. Christine Hahn, state epidemiologist and one of the key figures in Gov. Brad Little’s coronavirus task force, said.
The earliest statewide number of COVID-19 cases — on March 13 when the pandemic struck Idaho — was two, compared to Monday’s 11,402,
On May 16, Stage Two of Little’s Rebound Idaho plan went into effect, essentially opening restaurants, salons and gyms to the public once again. Then, a total of 2,324 Idahoans either tested positive or were deemed probable to have the coronavirus. Of those, only 20 were hospitalized, and one Idahoan had died of COVID-related illness. A second patient died the next day.
Today, COVID-19 has 129 patients in Idaho hospitals. Of those, 33 are in the ICU. But those numbers are rolling: Some patients in those hospitals are new, and some have been there for a week.
There have been 102 deaths statewide attributed to the virus.
“Thankfully,” Hahn said at a press conference, “although we have seen a rise in hospitalizations, it has not been as dramatic as what we saw with the first wave.”
The other key medical indicator officials are looking at is symptomatic criteria: How many people are reporting to emergency rooms with COVID-like symptoms? It’s a statistic, Hahn said, the Little administration will use to measure not just how many have it, but how many see themselves in dire enough jeopardy to warrant a trip to the emergency room.
“We look at this data,” Hahn said, “because we want to see, No. 1, the burden on the hospitals and their emergency departments, but also (as) an indication of not just how many cases there are. Many cases are just mildly ill. These are people that are sick enough to show up in the emergency departments.”
Statewide, that number has not only dropped dramatically, but it has stayed low for more than three months.
When the pandemic first struck, the daily count of Idahoans visiting emergency rooms peaked in mid-March, with 85 complaining of COVID-like symptoms on March 14, 89 on March 16 and 86 on March 19.
But since, those statewide numbers have plummeted to a low double-digit average. In-state COVID emergency room visits climbed back to 31 on July 7, but on July 12, on six Idahoans walked through emergency room doors.
While testing has gone up among Idaho’s population has climbed dramatically, the percentage of positive tests has more than doubled. For the week ending May 16, 3.4 percent of the state’s 5,544 cases came back positive. For the week ending July 4, 11.2 percent of the state’s 15,143 tests came back positive. It’s another number health officials recognize as a signifier of Idaho’s current relationship to COVID-19.
“We failed this metric, if you will,” Hahn said. “Things are not going in the right direction, as far as our percent positivity.”