COVID-19 hospitalizations in Alaska have reached new all-time highs. Here’s what that number really reflects.

As Alaskan hospitals grapple with a staffing shortage, limited capacity and a strained healthcare system, the state has reported a record number of hospitalizations for COVID-19.

But these counts are complicated. They include people who may have been admitted for something else and tested positive for the virus, but they also omit others who have been hospitalized with COVID-19 for so long that they are no longer contagious.

All of this makes it harder to discern the true burden on healthcare facilities using a single number, Alaskan Chief Medical Officer Dr Anne Zink said in an interview on Friday.

“I don’t think from a state’s perspective we can say it’s really overcovering, we can’t really say it’s undercovering,” Zink said. “We can say that this is the only data we can report, because it is the only data we have. “

The state’s hospitalization data also does not include emergency room visits, another way to quantify the burden on hospitals, as these are considered outpatient visits, Zink said.

The number of virus hospitalizations recorded on the state’s online dashboard comes from hospitals that report to a federal database, and that information is then pulled by state public health officials.

During his testimony before the House Health and Social Services Committee last week, Zink told lawmakers that the total number of hospitalizations reported on the state’s COVID-19 dashboard likely did not represent all of the sick people of the state. virus in Alaskan hospitals.

“For someone, say, who is in their 30s and is hospitalized, they can be contagious for the first 10, 15 days,” Zink said. “But they might require a hospital stay of a month or two. And so it’s an ongoing burden on the hospital that isn’t reflected in the overall scorecard numbers. “

There may also be other patients who are not reflected in the dashboard, Zink said. According to Zink, some patients may begin to recover and then have a complication, such as a heart attack or stroke, and are admitted and treated for that complication instead. It would not always show up in state data.

When asymptomatic COVID-positive people are admitted to hospitals for other reasons, such as work, these patients always require more work for hospital staff and require more resources. Staff need to dress and patients require individual rooms.

Asymptomatic patients could also become sicker in hospital, Zink said, and go from having no symptoms when they test positive to complications later.

Generally speaking, health officials say that once a patient is no longer positive for COVID-19, they are no longer counted in the total number of hospitalizations. They may, however, still be in a hospital bed while symptoms persist, requiring acute care and affecting capacity.

But there is some variety in how COVID-19-related hospitalizations are reported.

Based on responses from various Alaskan hospitals this week, some report all hospitalizations related to COVID-19 while others only report active cases.

Alaska’s largest hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center, reports only active cases of COVID-19 in their number of hospitalizations. This does not include others who are no longer contagious with the disease but still need hospital care, according to Providence Alaska spokesperson Mikal Canfield.

As of Wednesday, 50 people were considered active COVID-19 patients in Providence, while 22 others were not included in the number of cases because they were not infectious and were considered “recovered,” Canfield wrote in a report. E-mail.

“This does not necessarily indicate that the patients are doing well, it just indicates that these patients are no longer considered infectious,” he wrote.

Likewise, Fairbanks Memorial Hospital is only reporting active cases of COVID-19, which as of this week were 24 cases, while no patients were hospitalized after their infectious period.

According to spokesperson Alan Craft, the state’s dashboard COVID-19 hospitalization count is not necessarily an accurate representation of people who may be hospitalized for the disease at Mat-Su Regional Hospital. That’s because, like at other facilities, patients who are in hospital for longer stays due to COVID-19 may not show up in those numbers after being reclassified.

At the Alaska Native Medical Center, typically any patient who tests positive for COVID-19 is reported as hospitalization, but may be removed from that count based on symptoms and other guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even though he can still be hospitalized, said Dr Robert Onders of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

However, at Alaska Regional in Anchorage, spokeswoman Kjerstin Lastufka said their positive numbers for COVID include all patients who need care related to the virus until discharge.

“The number that is being reported to the state includes both patients in the acute phase of COVID-19 care as well as patients who are still recovering from COVID-19 – those who are past the infectious period – but are still hospitalized.” Lastufka said in a statement. E-mail.

Officials at Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau have said they are reporting new admissions of COVID-19 in their infectious window and in some cases, depending on the severity of a case upon admission, that infectious window may be extended. to 20 days.