Thread by @RoyMotteram

I heard someone today assert that we needn't worry too much about the rising number of Covid hospital admissions, because they're only staying in for a day.

That's interesting, I thought, & reassuring if true.

So I looked into it.
1/7

2/7
I couldn't find any stats on length of stay, so the assertion appears to be based on anecdote.

But what I did find is not quite so reassuring.

The number of Covid patients in hospital are not climbing as steeply as infections, but they ARE climbing

3/7
So I thought I'd look further, & see how many of those Covid patients are severely ill. The only measure of this that I have is the number on ventilators.

After all, they don't put a patient on a ventilator for the lolz.

4/7
OK. That's not so terrible. The "red" Mechanically Ventilated patients is much smaller. It's climbing, but not much.

But then I wondered if the scale was hiding a problem

5/7
So I looked at those same figures but as a %age.

After all, if the vaccination programme is reducing the severity of infections, then we should see a decline in the %age of hospitalised patients getting as far as needing ventilation.

I don't see a drop. Do you?

6/7
Actually, I do see a decline from the beginning of April until the 12th or 13th of May.

Then I see it climbing again.

From memory, that's more or less the time that the Delta variant took over.

I'm no epidemiologist. I'm no expert at all.

My only skill is the ability to look at data & produce some graphs.

But ignore anyone telling you that we needn't worry about the hospitalisation figures because "they're only in for a day"

The data tells a different story
/End

Thread extension:
I've had a number of helpful comments from people I know & whose opinion I value, as well as from people I don't know well (yet).

A number of you have identified that this is a very simplistic & limited view of the data ...

But remember ... I was only interested in the "you can ignore the hospitalisation statistic, because they're only in for a day" narrative, not a learned analysis

We know that there are a number of factors that will impact the %age of patients that need mechanical ventilation ...

For example, the older the patient, the more likely they will be severely ill & need ventilation.

On the other hand, if the patient has been vaccinated, they are less likely to get very ill.

Counterintuitively, if the NHS can get patients back on their feet & out of the door more quickly, then the patients staying longer are the ones needing ventilation, driving the %age up

I don't believe there are any public stats on duration of hospital stay

Having said all of that, I took your advice, & found the data (not very difficult) for earlier dates, & this is the coresponding chart, make of it what you will:

Bear in mind that I was looking into the argument that we should ignore hospital admissions, because stays are short. But if some patients are able to be discharged earlier, then as stated, this might push the %age on ventilators up ...

So, while the data might be far from reassuring, it doesn't directly address the question.

Should we be worried about the Hospital Admissions statistic?

I tried another approach, superimposing the number of admissions with the number on ventilators

I'm still not reassured?

Are you?

For those that didn't come in at the top of this thread, the data can be found here: england.nhs.uk/statistics/sta…

So I thought I'd look at a comparison of the number of patients in hospital versus the number of patients admitted over the previous "n" days. If the avg stay is "n" days, then patients admitted "n+1" days ago will no longer be patients, but all admitted since then still will be

If we start with 12 days, we get a picture that shows, on average, since mid Aug 2020, Covid patients have been staying in hospital for fewer than 12 days

If we add the line showing the preceding 10 days of admissions to that chart, we see that at times the average has been above 10 days, & at other times, it has been less

Adding a line for the preceding 8 days of admissions shows us that during the peaks of the 2nd & 3rd waves last autumn & winter, the average stay was mostly between 8 & 10 days

Adding a line for the preceding 6 days of admissions, & focussing in on the timeframe from 1st April, we see that during the tail of the 3rd wave, avg stay was still between 10 & 12 days, but now, as the 4th wave is kicking off, the average stay has dropped to between 6 & 8 days

Why might this have happened?

For 1 thing, more of us are vaccinated, which, according to the scientists, means that if we get Covid, the symptoms will, in general, be less severe.

The second reason why the average stay might be reducing is that the average age of patients is also dropping (probably also due to the effect of the vaccination of us old folk)

Apologies for the lairy colours

That yellow section of 18-54 is quite a broad range, but it's the only data I have.

What I find quite worrying is the relatively small but growing section of 0-5 & 6-17 yr olds.

Particularly given the growing evidence that long covid is a problem we should be worried about

So ... my final conclusion

Yes, the average hospital stay has definitely come down.

No, I'm not reassured that Covid-19 can now be dismissed as a trivial illness.

Are you?

Many thanks to all of you that prompted me to take the analysis further.

PS: For those of you thinking that comparing avg hospital stay at the beginning of a wave with avg stay during the peak might not be sound, this is what the picture is for the beginning of the 2nd wave, when numbers were similar to today.

Between 6 & 8, just as it is now. 🙄