Interesting data on SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) being released and discussed today. The first is the release of a study [DATA HERE] indicating that half of all recorded hospitalization cases for COVID-19 are incorrectly being interpreted.
The study of 50,000 VA patients recorded as hospitalized and testing positive for COVID-19, reflects that roughly half of the patients recorded on the dashboard were admitted to the hospital for some other, unrelated, reason and incidentally tested positive for the virus upon admission. They arrived for treatment for something else, were tested and recorded for COVID, but the treatment was not for any COVID-19 related issue.
An earlier study in May, using the charts of hospitalized pediatric patients found roughly the same thing; 40 to 45 percent of the patients recorded as COVID hospitalizations, when in reality they were in the hospital for something unrelated to COVID. As noted in the Atlantic “For two separate studies published in May, doctors in California read through several hundred charts of pediatric patients, one by one, to figure out why, exactly, each COVID-positive child had been admitted to the hospital. Did they need treatment for COVID, or was there some other reason for admission, like cancer treatment or a psychiatric episode, and the COVID diagnosis was merely incidental? According to the researchers, 40 to 45 percent of the hospitalizations that they examined were for patients in the latter group.”
In the VA study released today approximately half of the COVID-19 recorded hospital cases had nothing to do with COVID-19. “[T]he study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.” (link)




