Here’s How Full Hospitals In Washington Are

WASHINGTON — Even as vaccines begin rolling out to health care workers and offer a powerful tool to fight the pandemic, coronavirus case numbers and hospitalizations continue to hit record highs across the U.S.

The latest hospitalization data shows that at least 100,000 Americans or more have near consistently been in the hospital for coronavirus in December. In the evergreen state, the latest hospitalization data shows that 13.7 percent of hospital beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients, as are 19.9 percent of ICU beds. Hospitalization rates have shown a slight improvement over recent weeks, but that's still above the goal: the state Department of health would like to have fewer than 10 percent of hospital beds occupied by coronavirus patients.

The state is also missing another key metric. 82 percent of the state's hospital beds are now occupied — the goal is to have fewer than 80 percent of beds filled.

In December, the Department of Health and Human Services began reporting hospital capacity data at the facility level, which several have used to determine the percentage of hospital beds occupied across the country.

Of course, some regions are faring much better than others.

Here's a quick look at hospitalizations in Washington's most populous counties:

Notably, despite being the state's most crowded counties, the above three all have middling hospitalization rates. Yakima County, for example, has over a quarter of its hospital beds occupied by coronavirus patients, and more than a third of ICU beds are also occupied by COVID-19 patients.

The HHS data compiled by the University of Minnesota are calculated at the facility level and averaged for each county.

Here’s how the model developed by the university measures percentage of hospital and ICU beds occupied by coronavirus patients.

Percentage of hospital beds occupied by coronavirus patients = Seven day average of total adult and pediatric patients confirmed or suspected/Seven day average of staffed inpatient beds

Percentage of ICU beds occupied by coronavirus patients = Seven day average of total adult ICU confirmed/Seven day average of staffed ICU adult beds