How many COVID patients are hospitalized in McHenry County?
Looking at hospitalization data for COVID-19
A recent New York Times opinion piece theorized that hospitalizations are now a better indicator of COVID’s impact than number of cases or test positivity rates.
I’ve looked at number of cases, test positivity rates, and vaccination rates before, but I have yet to look at hospitalization data.
The Illinois Department of Public Health publishes hospitalization data by region. McHenry County is in Region 9 along with Lake County. The chart below looks at the total number of COVID patients and the average ICU bed availability at hospitals in Region 9 over the past month.
The number of COVID patients in region hospitals jumped from 98 on Nov. 17 to 240 a month later on Dec. 17. That’s an increase of nearly 150%. As of Dec. 19, there were a total of 238 COVID patients in hospitals in Region 9.
On Nov. 17, 22% of ICU beds in Region 9 hospitals were available. That dropped to 12% on Dec. 17.
Looking back at historical data, the first time Region 9 dropped below the 20% ICU bed availability was Aug. 18, 2021. Even at the height of last winter’s peak, the region never dropped below 23% ICU bed availability.
The number of COVID patients in region hospitals peaked at 370 on Nov. 17, 2020 but the ICU bed availability was at 43% that day. It dropped to 23% just two weeks later on Dec. 1. Since that time, we’ve never had more than 40% of ICU beds available.
The table below looks at the number of COVID patients at ICU bed availability in specific region hospitals.
Northwestern Medicine McHenry Hospital is currently treating more ICU patients than they have available beds. The number of COVID cases in that same hospital jumped from 65 last week to 81 this week. Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital jumped from 33 COVID cases last week to 41 this week.