Juno News - September 05, 2021


Let's talk about incidental COVID hospitalizations


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

188.69936

Word Count

885

Sentence Count

21

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I want to speak with you today about incidental COVID hospitalizations, what that term means and
00:00:11.000 why it matters perhaps more now than it's ever done before. So right now you're hearing a lot
00:00:16.860 of talk all across Canada about the prospects of a fourth wave. What's going to happen? Is there
00:00:22.660 going to be these massive rise in case counts? Oh well cases don't matter anymore. Many chief
00:00:27.180 medical officers tell us stop looking at the case counts look at the hospitalizations. Okay fair
00:00:32.320 enough what's going to happen with the hospitalizations? A lot of people threatening
00:00:36.300 the idea that well there's still unvaccinated people out there they're going to be filling up
00:00:40.660 the hospitals and so forth and some people even floating the prospects of another lockdown even
00:00:45.840 though the majority of people are vaccinated across the country even though a number of provinces have
00:00:50.820 brought in these vaccine passports which were supposed to be the thing that would stop us from
00:00:55.640 having another lockdown but oh well apparently they always leave lockdowns on the table. Incidental
00:01:00.880 COVID hospitalizations what are they? Well I want to tell you about a report that came out a few months
00:01:06.080 ago about pediatric hospitalizations in Canada. So the official statistic was that there was something
00:01:11.980 like 1500 kids who had been hospitalized with COVID throughout the entirety of the pandemic throughout
00:01:17.860 the past year and a half whatever the time frame that particular study was looking at. What they did do
00:01:23.420 though is they looked at what were those kids actually admitted to the hospital for and what was
00:01:29.180 very interesting is they found that only just over a third of those kids had actually been admitted
00:01:35.880 for COVID-19 because they were suffering for symptoms of it they needed to be in a hospital bed to be
00:01:41.540 treated for COVID-19. No what was actually going on in the majority of COVID hospitalizations for kids
00:01:48.100 in Canada was that they came in for something else they had a broken arm say another issue and they
00:01:54.140 had to get tested for COVID upon admittance because that is the protocol in in hospitals right now
00:01:59.140 healthcare facilities across Canada and they found that a lot of these kids tested positive for COVID
00:02:05.080 they had very mild symptoms or asymptomatic COVID and it was something that was not why they were there
00:02:11.440 for hospital but when the hospitalization statistics were reported they were included in it so the
00:02:18.020 majority of kids hospitalized for COVID in Canada were not actually hospitalized for COVID and that is
00:02:25.120 from the Public Health Agency of Canada. Now that first of all that's a very important thing to know
00:02:29.220 I've written about this before I've discussed it before a lot of people still don't know this that news
00:02:34.240 was not I think amplified to the degree it should have been. Now when it comes to adults that does not
00:02:39.420 hold true there are incidental findings of COVID for sure an adult gets into hospital for for whatever
00:02:44.900 reason they test positive for COVID and they are included in a COVID hospitalization tally but the
00:02:50.420 majority of adults are indeed in hospital for COVID the ones who are the statistics are more accurate
00:02:57.800 for adults is what I'm saying. However a number of doctors who are in hospitals in Ontario and throughout
00:03:03.820 Canada have told me that they believe that number will skew further into the fall basically
00:03:09.400 that there will be a greater proportion of people under Canada's COVID hospitalizations
00:03:14.660 who are in fact incidental findings. People who they're not actually suffering from COVID-19 they
00:03:19.880 just happen to have tested positive. That number is going to go up in the fourth wave because of the
00:03:24.700 number of vaccinated people and so forth. So I think that's just a really important thing that we need
00:03:30.220 to discuss a bit more because all of what I'm saying here the basic idea of incidental findings
00:03:35.280 of COVID-19 among hospitalizations. I think a lot of people I think I'm sure the majority of Canadians
00:03:40.580 aren't even aware that that's a thing but as we see in the fall if we see the reporting numbers show
00:03:47.640 hospitalizations are rising it's just important to get the nuance and the context and you're going to
00:03:52.200 want to ask how many of these are actual incidental findings of COVID-19 incidental hospitalizations
00:03:58.980 and I think another thing that should happen is that governments actually need to break that out
00:04:03.460 in their public reporting. So in Ontario for instance they have to their credit acknowledged
00:04:08.260 that case counts should not be the main thing people obsess over. So when Health Minister Christine
00:04:13.220 Elliott posts numbers every morning she actually focuses on the hospitalization so they've kind of
00:04:18.180 evolved their reporting. She's not just saying hey look at these case numbers she's saying look at
00:04:21.940 these hospitalization numbers and then they also tell you the case numbers. That's a good step forward
00:04:26.100 but a further nuance that would be important is to break out the incidental hospital admissions for
00:04:32.920 COVID-19. This is just one part of the conversation one part of context one part of nuance but I think
00:04:37.880 it's an important one and I think it needs to be one that's considered by all.