COVID-19 HOSPITALIZATION PATTERNS THROUGHOUT THE PANDEMIC ACROSS 10 US DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES (HHS) REGIONS

ABSTRACT

SESSION TITLE COVID-19 Infections Issues During and After Hospitalization SESSION TYPE Original Investigations PRESENTED ON 10/17/2022 0130 pm - 0230 pm PURPOSE: COVID-19 pandemic is well studied, but it’s impact on hospitalization pattern is still unclear. We aim to study the hospitalizations pattern throughout the COVID-19 pandemic across 10 US Health and Human Services (HHS) regions. METHODS: This study was conducted using two publically and freely available databases;1. The COVID Tracking Project- manually aggregated data from available sources from official, public state government sites, and 2. The US Department of HHS – state wise patient impact and hospital capacity data. The state wise hospitalization data was extracted and collated by noting hospitalization for the complete time range (from March 1, 2020 to March 7th, 2021) for dataset-1 and data reported between the dates of March 7th, 2021, to March 12th, 2022, for dataset-2. The HHS wise regional hospitalization data was then calculated by adding the respective daily state statistics and scaled to per 100,000 population. A 7-day moving average filter was finally applied to the data before visualization and analysis, to account for repeated days of missing recordings in the data sources. No patient and hospital identifiers were utilized;thus, study was IRB exempted. RESULTS: Based on proximity of the spikes in each wave, data visualization tools grouped, HHS regions 1, 2, 3, 5 in group A;regions 4, 6, 9 in group B, and regions 7, 8. 10 in group C. The visualization of data determined total 6 spikes till date. The start and end of spikes were determined by placing a threshold (10 cases per day per 100,000 population) on the number of daily hospitalizations. The spikes were further divided when a given start/end date pair has multiple clear peaks. Maximum number of days difference observed between the occurrence of COVID-19 peaks in number of hospitalizations, were 47 days for spike-3 for HHS regions in group A (Compared to 2 and 12 days in group B and C, respectively). For Spike-5 it was highest in group C as 78 days (compared to 18 and 1 day in group A and B, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: In a latest COVID-19 hospitalization data analysis, after normalization of data, states in HHS regions, 4, 6, and 9 have the closest spikes throughout the pandemic. These regions included three most populous states of US (Florida, Texas, California) among others and consisted of 67M (region 4), 42M (region 6) and 51M (region 9) people, total of roughly 50% US population. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS The result of this study, first to be presented at CHEST conference will pave the way in adding to public health policy discussion in preparedness and resources allocations for hospitalized patients. A subset-analysis of ICU admission is underway, which will be included at CHEST meeting presentation. DISCLOSURES No relevant relationships by Ramesh Adhikari no disclosure on file for Keerti Deepika;No relevant relationships by Taru Dutt No relevant relationships by Rahul Kashyap No relevant relationships by Arjun Rajasekar no disclosure on file for Shruti Srivnivasan;No relevant relationships by Salim Surani