Covid 7/6/20 | COVID 19 Information Page

The business of hospitals – as they say in many cases just follow the money if you want to understand what is going on – not sure on his premise and conclusions but it does bring into question how all this money is being managed – https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/07/05/coronavirus-hospitals-businesses-public-option-health-care-column/3266503001/

With that in mind I am trying to understand what is going on in Harris County TX. Lots of things are not adding up. AT THE VERY LEAST I can conclude we are not NY in terms of extent and issue.

Below is NY hospital metric and you can see NY surge in confirmation was at very small test levels and that immediately corresponded with hospital increases and deaths. Deaths were not delayed less than a week in terms of hospital peak. In fact fatality rates were rising in NY in the beginning. Positivity rate reached 50% in beginning (April 3rd).

Compare this with TX data so far https://txdshs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/0d8bdf9be927459d9cb11b9eaef6101f

Increase hospital visits from under 2K in beginning of June to now 8K

TX is not behaving at all like NY. Confirmations rising but deaths are range bound. Fatality rate is dropping. Positivity rate is increasing to now under 15%. Surge in positivity started mid June. I am not sure if we changed testing method or availability or even financial incentives – it is coincided with more testing. How are everyone being paid? – how is the contract tracer being paid? – how is the testing labs being paid? – what is the process with a positive vs. negative? What one cant deny is the admission to hospital – this growing number is a concern. What are these patients doing? How long? What treatment? Demographics?

The other thing we cant deny is the limited deaths – is this just a delay? Do we have better treatment? Are they being admitted when they really should just be sent home?

Currently Harris County – Area Q seems to be in ample situation in terms of hospital beds and ICU. IF we assume some historical data we have seen around 5% of hospital admission gets to ICU stage – this puts total for Harris at 122 vs. 139 available (and this assumes 139 is static).

Harris county is starting to see a drop in rate of confirmations. Harris county is sitting at 0.8% confirmed per capita. I still think something is not adding up.