Here’s How Full Anne Arundel County Hospitals Are

ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, MD — Even as vaccines start rolling out, coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to hit record highs across the U.S. The nation's hospitals have consistently had at least 100,000 coronavirus patients since early December, the data show.

In Anne Arundel County, 150 residents are currently hospitalized with coronavirus. That number is approaching the county's April 21 high of 172 hospitalizations.

Intensive Care Unit hospitalizations are also on the rise. Anne Arundel's 39 coronavirus patients in the ICU are approaching the county's record high of 49, which it set on May 13.

In December, the Department of Health and Human Services started reporting hospital capacity data at the facility level. University of Minnesota researchers take the weekly average number of coronavirus patients in each hospital and divide that by the number of available beds in each facility. This determines what percentage of a given hospital's beds are in use by coronavirus patients.

The team repeats this process for every hospital in the county. They then take the average of these numbers to estimate what percentage of the county's beds are taken by coronavirus patients.

The data for Dec. 24 to Dec. 30 show that 29.4 percent of Anne Arundel County's total hospital beds are occupied by people who have coronavirus. These patients also fill about 39.5 percent of the county's ICU beds.

These numbers don't account for people in the hospital for other reasons, however. Between coronavirus patients and all other hospitalizations, the health care system is under increased stress.

Maryland currently has 1,773 coronavirus-related hospitalizations. That's a notch above the springtime peak, but the state can temporarily withstand up to 8,000 coronavirus hospitalizations. Still, Gov. Larry Hogan has said several hospitals across the state are nearing full capacity.

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