zlacker

Respectfully, I think you are misinterpreting that headline. It's saying that of all the patients that tested positive for covid at the hospital, 40% of them were actually there for another reason. So a guy could be there for a broken arm and test positive for covid while there. He just needs to be treated for the broken arm, not covid.

>>wonder+(OP)
If you have just one patient in hospital with COVID and no other ailment that will represent a degradation of the 'normal' operation of the hospital.

If you have 10% of the hospital population in hospital with COVID (and just for COVID) you will have degraded the performance of the hospital by 10%.

This is because hospitals are designed to operate at maximum capacity (i.e all the beds are in use and there is a waiting list to get a bed). Every bed in use by a COVID patient will just add someone to the waiting list.

So my question would be what percentage of patients are in hospital because of COVID and only because of COVID?

That number is a very good measure of the pressure that hospital system will be under and my guess is it will be much greater than 10%.

>>jussij+s02
Hospitals are not designed to operate at maximum capacity.

>>nradov+bW4
On any given day, our hospitals — by design — operate at 90 to 100% capacity. That's why we have sought waivers to allow critical access hospitals to operate above their licensed capacity Peel wrote.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/01/jeff-jacks...