Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) admitted Monday that hospitalizations in New York are likely being over counted by as much as 50%.
Speaking in Rochester, the Democrat noted that people who are admitted to a hospital for something like a car accident might test positive for COVID. These people are not being treated for the virus, but for their injuries from the accident, yet they are being counted in their COVID hospitalization totals.
“Someone is in a car accident they go to the emergency room they test positive for COVID while they’re there, they’re not they’re being treated for COVID,” Hochul explained, reported News 10’s Jennifer Lewke.
“Now someone’s condition can worsen while they’re in the hospital,” the governor continued, “I’m not saying that won’t happen, but I’ve just been doing a random call around to some of the hospital leaders that I touch base with and I’m seeing numbers from 20% to sometimes 50%. We don’t have clear data right now, that’s anecdotal.”
Starting Tuesday, hospitals will be asked to report to the state “whether a patient is in the hospital for COVID-19 or if they tested positive for COVID-19 while being treated for another ailment,” News 10 noted.
“Beginning tomorrow [Tuesday] we’re going to be asking all hospitals to break out for us, how many people are being hospitalized because of COVID symptoms, how many people happen to test positive just while they’re in there for other treatments,” Hochul announced. “I think that’s important, I just want to be honest with New Yorkers about how bad this is. Yes, the number of people infected is high but I want to see whether or not the hospitalizations correlate with that.”
Hochul, true to her consistent alarmism on COVID, said during the same briefing, “We’re not in a good place, I’m going to be really honest with you… this is the winter surge we predicted.”
Last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci essentially admitted to the same, but only for children patients. The Daily Wire reported:
Dr. Anthony Fauci provided some insight regarding the accuracy of metrics used for counting positive COVID-19 cases in children. On Wednesday night, Fauci told MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin that since all children are tested for COVID-19 when they enter a hospital, regardless of the reason they are there, that many children are hospitalized “with COVID” rather than “because of COVID.” Because of that, some COVID-19 cases can be “over counted,” Fauci said.
“First of all, quantitatively, you’re having so many more people, including children, who are getting infected. And even though hospitalization among children is much, much lower on a percentage basis than hospitalizations for adults, particularly elderly individuals,” Fauci said, according to the Washington Examiner. “When you have such a large volume of infections among children, even with a low level of rate of infection, you’re going to still see a lot more children who get hospitalized.”
“But the other important thing is that if you look at the children who are hospitalized, many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID,” the bureaucrat continued. “And what we mean by that — if a child goes in the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID. And they get counted as a COVID-hospitalized individual. When in fact, they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that. So it’s over-counting the number of children who are, quote, ‘hospitalized with COVID,’ as opposed to because of COVID.”
Related: Ben Shapiro’s ‘Epic Thread’ On What Media, Democrats Are Finally ‘Willing To Admit’ About COVID-19
Related: MSNBC Host: Omicron ‘Something That Looks Like The Flu’