More Questions about Spring 2020 Covid in New York City Hospitals

 New York City’s hospital emergency departments were not at a breaking point in spring 2020. In fact, they were relatively empty and saw a 50% drop in visits. Here are five observations with supporting graphs or tables that explain why. (Raw data file with links to sources is at end of post.)

Observation One: NYC Emergency Departments weren't overrun by people with covid-19

• Only 3% of the people who came to New York City hospital EDs during the spring 2020 March-May wave were clinically diagnosed with the virus
• During the 2017-2018 flu season, there were more people admitted to the hospital with symptoms associated with the disease than ever before

NYC Emergency Room respiratory visit spike may have been panic-driven

• At spring 2020's peak, the ratio of respiratory visits to covid diagnosis was 30%, which also points to at least some overreaction, psychogenic illness, or symptoms from non-covid causes.
• Most people who visited NYC emergency rooms between March 2020 and June 2021 were not admitted to the hospital.

Many patients counted as covid hospitalizations in spring 2020 were not admitted with COVID-like illness (CLI).

• 40% of inpatients with a COVID diagnosis from March 18-30, 2020 had not been admitted with the illness.
• The gap between CLI admissions and COVID hospitalizations started seven days after the stay-home order and continued to widen as more people were coded daily as COVID than were admitted to the hospital with CLI.

https://brownstone.org/articles/more-questions-about-spring-2020-covid-in-new-york-city-hospitals/