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Santa Clara County: Temp drop in ICU due to Xmas drop?
#1
I watch the numbers in the county where I live, Santa Clara County.  As with much of California, the COVID cases in the ICU filled essentially all the ICU beds.  In the last few days, we've come off the tightest numbers, where we got to 5% availability in SCC (and less than 1% (per the state's mangled numbers) in the SF Bay Area).

We also may be starting to drop in daily new cases from the very highest numbers just a few days ago.

But, wait a minute, there should be about a 3 week difference between the peak of new cases and peak of ICU cases.

Here's what the new cases (by date of sample) with 7-day average dark blue line & ICU bed usage (Covid beds orange; non-Covid blue; available gray) graphs look like:
[Image: SCCcases-ICU.png]

I had always assumed the drop around Christmas Day (214 on 12/25) was an artifact due to people not getting tested (test sites closed and/or results not being returned).  (The other big drop about Jan. 3 was due to the state's data system being down for maintenance.)

I'm sure that was the cause of much of that drop.  But maybe that artifact disguised a real drop at the same time with the renewed push to stop the spread at the time.   I wondered why we didn't see really big numbers immediately after Christmas.

A typical timing is that symptoms (and new cases) appear a week after exposure, hospitalization happens a week to 10-days after symptoms appear, and the patient goes into the ICU a week to 10 days after that.

We are approximately 3 weeks after Christmas.  I think the drops we are currently seeing in ICU cases are due to a drop that happened around Christmas.  We will see them pick up again in a few days.

A possible slight drop in new cases in the last few days isn't yet visible in the new case graph.  It seems to appear if you look at the announced new cases over the last week compared to the new cases the week before.  4 out of the last 5 days, the case numbers are down relative to the week before. The remaining day saw a rise of only 2 cases.  The latest day's drop is the biggest of the drops.

I haven't looked at other counties or larger regions to see if this seems to be true in other parts of the SF Bay Area, or throughout California, or the US.
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#2
(01-18-2021, 12:35 PM)M_T Wrote: I watch the numbers in the county where I live, Santa Clara County.  As with much of California, the COVID cases in the ICU filled essentially all the ICU beds.  In the last few days, we've come off the tightest numbers, where we got to 5% availability in SCC (and less than 1% (per the state's mangled numbers) in the SF Bay Area).

We also may be starting to drop in daily new cases from the very highest numbers just a few days ago.

But, wait a minute, there should be about a 3 week difference between the peak of new cases and peak of ICU cases.

Here's what the new cases (by date of sample) with 7-day average dark blue line & ICU bed usage (Covid beds orange; non-Covid blue; available gray) graphs look like:
[Image: SCCcases-ICU.png]

I had always assumed the drop around Christmas Day (214 on 12/25) was an artifact due to people not getting tested (test sites closed and/or results not being returned).  (The other big drop about Jan. 3 was due to the state's data system being down for maintenance.)

I'm sure that was the cause of much of that drop.  But maybe that artifact disguised a real drop at the same time with the renewed push to stop the spread at the time.   I wondered why we didn't see really big numbers immediately after Christmas.

A typical timing is that symptoms (and new cases) appear a week after exposure, hospitalization happens a week to 10-days after symptoms appear, and the patient goes into the ICU a week to 10 days after that.

We are approximately 3 weeks after Christmas.  I think the drops we are currently seeing in ICU cases are due to a drop that happened around Christmas.  We will see them pick up again in a few days.

A possible slight drop in new cases in the last few days isn't yet visible in the new case graph.  It seems to appear if you look at the announced new cases over the last week compared to the new cases the week before.  4 out of the last 5 days, the case numbers are down relative to the week before. The remaining day saw a rise of only 2 cases.  The latest day's drop is the biggest of the drops.

I haven't looked at other counties or larger regions to see if this seems to be true in other parts of the SF Bay Area, or throughout California, or the US.
You might be right, but hospitalizations are decreasing.

Here's what I don't understand, Alameda County has ICU capacity available by county listed on it's site.

The Bay Area

Solano: 10%
Santa Clara: 10%
San Mateo: 15%
Contra Costa: 16%
Alameda: 20%
San Francisco: 21%
Napa: 22%
Sonoma: 32%
Marin: 33%

https://covidactnow.org/us/california-ca...?s=1523472

According to SCC, they have 5% and the Bay Area has less than 1%
According to CCC, they have 12% and the Bay Area has around 4%

I'm not buying the "official" numbers. There seems to be more BS with these numbers than the returns out of GA, PA, MI, WI, etc. . . .
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#3
and now today, CCC is reporting 3.0% ICU availability. Oddly, there are the same number of Covid patients in ICU as there were over the last couple of days. Total beds dropped overnight by 16 (about 9%)
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#4
(01-18-2021, 03:51 PM)cardcrimson Wrote: You might be right, but hospitalizations are decreasing.

Here's what I don't understand, Alameda County has ICU capacity available by county listed on it's site.

The Bay Area

Solano: 10%
Santa Clara: 10%
San Mateo: 15%
Contra Costa: 16%
Alameda: 20%
San Francisco: 21%
Napa: 22%
Sonoma: 32%
Marin: 33%

https://covidactnow.org/us/california-ca...?s=1523472

According to SCC, they have 5% and the Bay Area has less than 1%
According to CCC, they have 12% and the Bay Area has around 4%

I'm not buying the "official" numbers. There seems to be more BS with these numbers than the returns out of GA, PA, MI, WI, etc. . . .

Short answer: The local numbers are probably right and the CovidActNow.org site is wrong.  For SCC, it appears CovidActNow is   not counting several hospitals, including VA hospital in Palo Alto.   The SCC site indicates there are 11 acute care hospitals in SCC.  The CovidActNow site appears to be using data from only 8.

Moreover, the numbers reported by one hospital, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center show more ICU beds available than SCC reports.  (I'm not saying which one is incorrect (if either), only that they are different.)

-----

Follow the numbers...  If you look through that third party site, you see they are getting hospitalizations at HHS Healthdata.gov

https://healthdata.gov/search/type/datas...pe/dataset

Apparently, COVID Hospital Data Coverage Report which has the numbers for each hospital for each week.  The FIPS code indicates the county (Alameda: 6001; Santa Clara: 6085).  For the collection week 1/8/21, Alameda County is lines are 280 to 291; Santa Clara 578-585.
There are many columns (~77).

The hospitals in the federal count do not include (at least) the Palo Alto VA hospital.  They include
Kaiser (SC), Stanford, El Camino, SCVMC, Good Samaritan, Kaiser(SJ), Lucille Packard, Regional Medical Center

Columns:
AP: total_icu_beds_7_day_sum
AQ: total_staffed_adult_icu_beds_7_day_sum
AR: icu_beds_used_7_day_sum
AS: staffed_adult_icu_bed_occupancy_7_day_sum
AT: staffed_icu_adult_patients_confirmed_and_suspected_covid_7_day_sum
AU: staffed_icu_adult_patients_confirmed_covid_7_day_sum

Columns AP & AR apparently include pediatric and perhaps neonatal ICU beds.
The sum of AQ (7x the daily number?) is AC: 1914  SCC: 2648
The sum of AS is AC: 1583  SCC: 2225
The sum of AT is AC: 830  SCC: 1083
The sum of AU is AC: 794  SCC: 1062

The first thing to note is that these are weekly numbers.  I'm not sure whether 1/8/21 is the start or end date.
From SCC numbers:  
Week ending Friday 1/8/21:
AQ: 2328  AS: 2139 AT: 1177  AU: 1128
Week starting Friday 1/8/21: 
AQ: 2368  AS: 2213  AT: 1162  AU: 1101

I expect a Friday would be a week ending date.  If so the differences are (SCC - Federal numbers)
AQ: -320  AS: -86  AT: 94  AU: 86

The two hospitals listed in the federal stats that had larger percentage of free adult ICU beds are (note these are 7x daily numbers, so ECH would have an average of 181/7 = 26 occupied of 224/7 = 32 total adult ICU beds)
El Camino hospital:  181 of 224 adult ICU beds occupied  (daily average available: 6)
Santa Clara Valley Medical Center:  436 of 745 adult ICU beds occupied  (daily average available: 44)

But by the SCC numbers, the largest daily number of available beds (1/2/21 to 1/14/21) was just 34.
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#5
There is also the data collected by the State of California at
https://data.ca.gov/dataset/covid-19-hos...83b7542225

Summing the daily numbers (so 7x the daily numbers), for the week ending Jan. 8, these are reported by Santa Clara County:
County: covid: 1128 occupied: 2139 available: 189 total: 2328
State: covid: 1106 occupied: ---- available: 263 total: ----
Fed: covid: 1062 occupied: 2225 available: (423) total: 2648
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#6
Gotta love consistency in data.

Maybe it's just a sign of the times, but I don't trust very much anymore.
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