Challenge 2: Hospitalization Rates for the Seasonal Flu v. COVID-19

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One afternoon, June and her siblings, her brother Ruben and older sister Carla, are sitting around the family room of their home with the TV tuned in to a local channel. A preview for the evening news comes on and the newcaster asks in a serious, but dramatic voice, “Hospitalization rates for COVID-19 are on the rise, could the number of hospitalizations outnumber those for last year’s seasonal flu?”

“Wait a minute,” Ruben says, “I thought this pandemic is more serious than the seasonal flu. I didn’t realize that people are hospitalized with the flu so often.”

“Yeah,” June agrees, “I know lots of people who have had the flu and they miss a few days of school, but then they are fine.”

“Well, just like we are seeing with COVID-19, some people are more vulnerable than others and end up with more serious medical conditions from the flu,” Carla describes inserting her knowledge of public health.

“My friend Ray has a cousin who is a nurse at the hospital in New Haven and apparently, there have been a ton of hospitalizations for COVID-19 in the last few months and at times it’s been overwhelming,” June says.

“Yeah, it doesn’t seem like the seasonal flu overwhelms hospitals the way that COVID-19 has,” Ruben comments.

Investigate & Analyze

Part 1. Comparing hospitalizations from the seasonal flu and COVID-19

“Let’s look at the data and see what the numbers say,” Carla suggests. And she pulls up a few sources of data, two are compiled by the Centers of Disease Control and one by the NYTimes.

• CDC & Prevention - 2018-19 Seasonal Flu

• https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_5.html

• https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html?pageType=LegacyCollection&collectionName=Maps+and+Trackers&label=Maps+and+Trackers&module=hub_Band&region=inline&template=storyline_band_recirc

Use the websites to answer each question below about hospitalizations for the 2018-19 season of influenza and for COVID-19.

• Conclude:
  • Which age group had the largest number of hospitalizations due to influenza in the 2018-19 season?
• Calculate and Conclude:
  
  • Which age group had the largest hospitalization rate (per 100,000) during the entire 2018-19 flu season?
    
• Reflect and Discuss:
  
  • If your answers to the above two questions are different, explain what could account for this difference.
    
• Investigate:
  
  • What was the percentage of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 for the week ending 09-Jan-2021 (the week with the greatest number of hospitalizations in the pandemic so far) who were 65+? How about the percentage of people who were 0-4?
    
• Compare:
  • How do the percentages you found in part d compare to the percentages of people in the same age groups hospitalized with the seasonal flu in 2018-19?
    
• Discover:
  • Using the NYTimes coronavirus data, find the chart under “US Trends” that illustrates the all time number of hospitalizations during the pandemic. Use this chart to find 7-day average hospitalizations on Jan. 9, 2020.
    
• Compare:
  • Compare the number you identified in part f to the total number of hospitalizations for the entire flu season of 2018-19.
    

Part 2 - Hospitalizations before and after wide-spread vaccination

CDC Hospitalization Data:

• https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admissions

• Investigate:
  • Using the graphic to search by jurisdiction, find current 7-day average for new hospital admissions for the week of Dec. 31, 2020 to Jan. 6, 2021 for the following jurisdictions:
    
    • United States
    • Connecticut
    • Mississippi
• Compare:
  • Again using the graphic, find current 7-day average for new hospital admissions for the week of Aug. 18, 2020 to Aug. 24, 2021 for the following jurisdictions:
    
    • United States
    • Connecticut
    • Mississippi

Reflect & Discuss