The study found that from March 2020 through early January 2021—before vaccination was widespread, and before the Delta variant had arrived—the proportion of patients with mild or asymptomatic disease was 36 percent. From mid-January through the end of June 2021, however, that number rose to 48 percent. In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.
The study found that from March 2020 through early January 2021—before vaccination was widespread, and before the Delta variant had arrived—the proportion of patients with mild or asymptomatic disease was 36 percent. From mid-January through the end of June 2021, however, that number rose to 48 percent. In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.
This increase was even bigger for vaccinated hospital patients, of whom 57 percent had mild or asymptomatic disease. But unvaccinated patients have also been showing up with less severe symptoms, on average, than earlier in the pandemic: The study found that 45 percent of their cases were mild or asymptomatic since January 21.
A leaked Zoom call between doctors and marketing staff at Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center in North Carolina has gone viral. It shows staff plotting to “scare” the public with inflated COVID numbers. “I guess my feeling at this point and time is maybe we need to be completely a little bit more scary [sic] to the public,” says Dr. Mary Rudyk, who served as the former chief of medical staff. “There are many people still hospitalized that we are considering post-covid but we’re not counting in those numbers, so how do we include those post-covid people in the numbers of the patients we have in the hospital?”