by James A. Bacon
The Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association today unveiled its own COVID-19 dashboard — and it puts the Virginia Department of Health information portal to shame. The VHHA dashboard contains key metrics lacking in the state’s statistical summary, and its data on the number of hospitalizations conflicts with those provided by the state.
While the VDH reported this morning that Virginia has seen 497 hospitalizations, the VHHA says the number of confirmed positives in hospitals is 538. Including the number of hospitalized patients whose tests are pending, the number is 1,194.
The VHHA dashboard also provides the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care, an indicator of the number of acutely ill patients. The combined number of COVID-19 patients (both confirmed and tests pending) in the ICU is 387. The combined number for patients on ventilators, a metric for the most acute level of care for virus victims, is 285.
The new dashboard also provides other critical public health data:
Total ventilators on-hand in hospitals: 2,566
Total ventilators in use: 666
Percentage of ventilators in use: 26%
Bed availability: 5,519
Number of Virginia hospitals experiencing difficulty in obtaining or replenishing personal protective equipment in the next 72 hours: 11
Number of Virginia hospitals experiencing difficult in obtaining or replenishing other medical supplies in the next 72 hours: 1
“Reliable data is a cornerstone of any predictive modeling work being done by those who are working to forecast the spread of COVID-19, anticipate its peak, and identify health care providers’ needs as they battle this virus,” said VHHA Vice President of Data Analytics David Vaamonde. “The data gathered to populate this dashboard is a key component of that effort.”
When asked why the VHHA numbers differ from the state’s, Julian Walker told Bacon’s Rebellion said only that the VHHA gets its data directly from Virginia’s hospitals and that its methodology differs from that of the Virginia Department of Health. I have requested information from VDH and will update this post when I get a response. Update: I have posted the VDH’s explanation in the comments, which you can find here.
