By Matt Rooney
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So we finally got (indirectly) an early New Jersey COVID-19 hospitalization rate from the Murphy Administration, Save Jerseyans. It only took two weeks of asking!
Governor Murphy’s team provided the following stats at today’s daily pandemic “everybody panic” presser:
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8,825 positive tests (as of today).
108 dead (as of today).
16,547 negative tests (as of today).
1,080 hospitalizations (as of early today/yesterday) per the New Jersey Department of Health.
That means slightly > 4% of those who’ve been tested are hospitalized based on currently available #s.
It’s slightly > 12% if you only look at those with positive test results.
*In the interest of accuracy, those numbers could get higher later today when/if we get updated totals on today’s new hospital admissions. Based on yesterday’s positive total of 6,876, the rate of hospitalization for positive test patients would be about 3-points higher: 15.7%.
What we still don’t know, of course, is how many people are positive but asymptomatic, so the actual hospitalization rate relative to the true infected number among the general population might be a lot lower. Much, much lower.
Figuring out that last part is the great question vexing infectious disease experts and engineers at the moment.
“I’m sure you have seen the recent report out of the U.K. about them adjusting completely their needs,” Dr. Deborah Brix noted at Thursday’s White House presser. “This is really quite important. If you remember, that was the report that says there would be 500,000 deaths in the U.K. and 2.2 million deaths in the United States. They’ve adjusted that number in the U.K. to 20,000. Half a million to 20,000. We are looking at that in great detail to understand that adjustment.”
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