IDPH 'Unable' To Say How Many Children Are Hospitalized For COVID

CHICAGO — State public health officials said they were unable to determine how many hospitalized people have been vaccinated against COVID-19, how many of them are children or how many people are hospitalized for COVID-19 symptoms — as opposed to having tested positive for the virus after showing up at the hospital for another reason.

An attorney for the Illinois Department of Public Health said the agency does not collect data that differentiates between so-called "acute" and "incidental" cases of COVID-19.

Currently, anyone in the hospital who tests positive for the coronavirus is included in coronavirus hospitalization counts sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to state health data, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 statewide fell slightly on two days last week, following a two-month rise that coincided with the return of colder temperatures.

But the number of patients with COVID-19 in Illinois hospitals is still at an all-time high, although the number in the state's intensive care units has yet to reach May 2020 or November 2020 peaks.

Doctors and public health officials in other states have called for a re-evaluation of COVID-19 metrics, as the more-contagious, antibody-evading omicron variant appears to land a smaller share of people it infects in hospitals. Data also indicates fewer patients with omicron need treatment in intensive care units or extended hospital stays compared with the delta variant.

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Public health officials in Massachusetts and the governor of New York both announced changes to their counting methods last week.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health announced Thursday that hospitals would begin reporting the number of primary and incidental hospital admissions on Monday.

"I have always wondered, we're looking at the hospitalizations of people testing positive in a hospital. Is that person in the hospital because of COVID or did they show up there and are routinely tested and showing positive and they may have been asymptomatic or even just had the sniffles?" New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a Jan. 3 appearance in Rochester, according to a transcript of her remarks.

"Beginning tomorrow, we're going to be asking all hospitals to break out for us how many people are being hospitalized because of COVID symptoms. How many people are happened to be testing positive just while they're in there for other treatments?" Hochul said.

"I think that's important. I just want to always be honest with New Yorkers about how bad this is. Yes, the sheer numbers of people infected are high, but I want to see whether or not the hospitalizations correlate with that," she added. "I'm anticipating to see that at least a certain percentage overall are not related to being treated for COVID. But we're still going to watch hospital capacity. Hospital capacity is still hospital capacity."

Between half and two-thirds of those admitted to some New York hospitals were such "incidental" cases, according to The New York Times.

In California, hospitals in Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area reported that two-thirds of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 had been admitted for another reason before testing positive, NBC reported. One doctor at the University of California San Francisco medical center told the network that just 12 of its 40 coronavirus patients were admitted with symptoms of the virus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said the number of children hospitalized with the coronavirus included a significant number of incidental cases.

"It is noteworthy, however, that many children are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID, reflecting the high degree of penetrance of infection among the pediatric population," Fauci said last month during a news briefing. "The final conclusion about the level of severity in children remains to be determined."

In Illinois, public health officials include data about the number of new cases among youth — defined as anyone up to age 22 — as well as the share of COVID-19 emergency department visits among children under age 5 and between 5 and 17.

But it does not disclose the number of hospitalized children with COVID-19. IDPH attorney Nicole Rhim said Monday in response to a public records request that the department had been "unable to identify" records showing how many children were hospitalized.

After peaking at 15 percent of visits to emergency rooms during the final days of 2021, the share of children somehow dropped from 11 percent to zero percent from Saturday to Sunday, according to the state health department's website.

At a briefing Friday, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the number of pediatric hospitalizations are at their highest level since the start of the pandemic two years ago, The Associated Press reported. Walensky said that number includes children admitted for other reasons but found to be infected at the hospital.

Patch also requested any records showing the number of vaccinated people hospitalized as opposed to unvaccinated people. Rhim said the state was also unable to find those records.

Spokespeople for Northwestern Medicine and NorthShore University HealthSystem both told Patch the "vast majority" of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 are unvaccinated, although neither provided numbers showing how many vaccinated people have been admitted to the hospital systems or their ICUs.

In an email to Patch explaining why the state did not have any of the information requested, the Pritzker administration's attorney downplayed the data's importance.

"What's important to look at," Rhim said, "is the record numbers of people in the hospitals, either due to COVID-19 or with COVID-19, and how to bring that number down."

This article originally appeared on the Chicago Patch