New York has made a big adjustment to how hospitals report patient intake by distinguishing between those who come in with COVID or because of COVID.
On Monday, Gov. kathy Hochul said “we’re looking at a critical moment, but we’re going to start asking some questions. We talked about the hospitalizations. I have always wondered, we’re looking at the hospitalizations of people testing positive in a hospital”.
“Is that person in the hospital because of COVID or did they show up there and are routinely tested and showing positive and they may have been asymptomatic or even just had the sniffles,” she continued.
“Someone is in a car accident, they go to the emergency room, they test positive for COVID while they’re there. They’re not there being treated for COVID,” the governor said.
Hospitals are now required to clarify whether a patient with COVID-19 comes to the hospital because they have symptoms of the virus or due to another issue.
As of Monday, there are 9,563 New York residents in the hospital due to COVID-19. Data from New York City shows that the daily average of hospitalizations over seven days is 469.
103 COVID-related deaths were reported in the state on Sunday. Hochul said the numbers are “rather shocking” but pointed out that omicron’s severity “is far less than we’ve seen before”.
The governor said she has spoken to a handful of hospital leaders about patient intake reporting and found a 20%-to-50% difference in patients being treated for COVID and patients with other ailments testing positive.
“I just want to always be honest with New Yorkers about how bad this is. Yes, the sheer numbers of people infected are high, but I want to see whether or not the hospitalizations correlate with that,” Hochul said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also asked hospitals to distinguish between patients with COVID-19 and those that are there for something else but happen to test positive.