The number seems to go up and up doesn't it? While that might seem worrying, the State of Utah released more stats on their website. Some of those stats may provide valuable insights to what is happening with COVID-19.
Hospitalization Stats
For starters, we get to see the breakdown of confirmed cases. And I must say, the initial look didn't seem as impressive.
Looking at 45% of the positive cases with underlying issues, it seems like the virus could hit anyone. Of course, that means we would have to go deeper and check out the hospitalization stats.
All the sudden, we are at over 72% when we turn the attention to the 500+ persons taken to the hospital. It turns out, diabetes and cardiovascular issues cover a huge portion of the stats. Smoking and chronic pulmonary problems are not far behind either. The one thing that intrigued me was not seeing obesity listed anywhere. It is possible it could be under cardiovascular, but it may be under other.
So, having any of the rather common issues put you at a much greater risk when you contract the virus. COVID-19 might as well be some sort of Spartan Virus where if you aren't fit, you are more likely to die. If this doesn't motivate you to live healthier, it should now.
Recoveries
For quite a while, I was under the impression that nobody has left the hospital and recovered yet. Turns out, that might not be the case.
No matter how you slice and dice it, that number is less than the 535 total hospitalized cases in the state. More than half of the hospitalized patients have not been inpatients for who knows how long.
The third stat represents a delay in reporting current numbers. This means, there are 3 facilities whose numbers may lag as they do not report daily. I do not know which facilities they are, but I doubt they are one of the major ones in the state.
ICU/Ventilators
Then, the most interesting set of data is the ICU admittance.
The 500+ hospitalization represents 8.7% of the total confirmed cases in Utah. That is one number that has been familiar to me because it's been on display.
What is more interesting is the ICU and ventilator numbers. It would appear less than 3% of the 6000+ cases were in the ICU. Only 1.4% of the total positive cases required ventilator use. The stats do not show if they overlap, but that is a surprisingly smaller number than I had anticipated.
You see, the state focused most of the efforts in testing people with noticeable symptoms. So, asymptomatic people haven't been the bulk of the stats. I hope the actual overall numbers are much smaller than the percentages mentioned.
Finally, we close out with the epidemic curve. As of the day of this writing, Utah is on the decline in COVID-19 cases.
Does that mean it's time to resume normalcy? For some, it is. For me, I would like to observe the stats for the next 2-3 weeks to decide if I want to loosen up on my safety precautions.
Did we overreact? It is possible, but we are not out of the waters yet.
It's worth noting that the state only has a population of 3.2 million. Salt Lake City only has around 200,000 people living there. The population density is nowhere near that of New York City or Los Angeles. The more spread out population could be a blessing in disguise.
I do hope, however, that it's time to see it go down and stay down.