Covid-19 Weekly Update

A Look at the US Numbers as of April 11, 2022

Apr 11, 2022

No video this week. I’ve been too busy with work—had to go to Asheville, North Carolina on about 4 hours’ notice as part of an investigation into one of my cases. Beautiful country, though!

The current United States Covid-19 data is below. I pulled the current data from the CDC (cases, deaths, positive testing percentage) and HHS websites (hospitalization and ICU census).

Below the data, I wrote a bit about the claim that the US HHS numbers are low because of a federally mandated reporting change. Not so, of course, but putting out a Twitter narrative fire is usually fool’s errand.

Also, stay tuned: I’m planning on some non-Covid longform pieces very soon.

US Covid-19 Data

Cases (7-day Average, CDC Data)

Current: 28,170 (4/8/2022)
Last Week: 25,711 (+9.6%)
Notes and Trends
- Down 96.5% from the recent wave peak
- Starting to see some upward movement after being relatively flat for a couple weeks
- Down 56.5% from the same day last year

Positive Testing Percentage (7-day Average, CDC Data)

Current: 3.16% (4/7/2022)
Last Week: 2.64% (+23.0%)
Notes and Trends
- Down 89.3% from the recent wave peak, but up 48.4% from mid-March trough
- Down 42.0% from the same day last year

Hospitalization Census (HHS Data)

Current: 14,759 (4/11/2022)
Last Week: 15,254 (-3.2%)
Notes and Trends
- Down 90.9% from the recent wave peak
- New pandemic low as of 4/11, although it has been essentially flat in the high 14K/low 15K range for a little over a week
- Down 66.5% from the same day last year

ICU Census (HHS Data)

Current: 1,620 (4/11/2022)
Last Week: 1,838 (-11.9%)
Notes and Trends
- Down 93.9% from the recent wave peak
- New pandemic low as of 4/11, but rate of decline starting to flatten
- Down 82.4% from the same day last year, and less than half of our previous pandemic low in June 2021

Deaths (7-day Average, CDC Data)

Current: 516 (4/8/2022)
Recent Wave Peak: 2,674 (2/2/2022)
Notes and Trends
- Down 80.7% from the recent wave peak
- Down 26.1% from the same day last year

HHS Covid Census Data Has Not Changed

Over the past week or so, I (and others) have tried to counter a narrative that crept into the Twitter consciousness that the HHS hospital census/admit numbers are lower because the way they are counted has changed. The genesis of this appears to be a tweet with a deliberately deceptive screenshot from a piece about the New Hampshire HHS changing its state definition of a “Covid hospitalization” to include only those being treated for Covid.

This resulted in the standard “Oh, so that’s why the numbers are still low” replies and quote tweets, and I’m sure it’s now etched into a subset of Twitter who will take up the mantle of reply guy and blast the erroneous conclusion wherever they can. But even New Hampshire’s numbers didn’t change with respect to their piece of the federal pie. In fact, no state has changed. When encountering such a misinformed person in the wild, feel free to kindly point them to this brief thread and let them know that (so far) nothing has changed with the reported national HHS numbers: