Working-Age COVID Hospitalization Rate Rises 5.5%

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The COVID-19 wave that began in the summer continues to push more working-age people into the hospital.

Hospitals told the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that they admitted 7,098 adults ages 20 through 59 with COVID during the week ending Jan. 6.

The overall working-age COVID hospitalization rate was 4.1 per 100,000 people in that age group.

See the accompanying gallery for a look at the 12 states with the worst numbers.

What it means: In the summer, COVID trackers were hoping that the coronavirus had infected everyone it could infect and would sputter out. Now, COVID looks as if it’s making a comeback and casting a shadow on any projections that depend on accurate mortality or life expectancy estimates.

Some life insurance actuaries and rating analysts at firms such as A.M. Best have predicted, based on data posted before July 1, that any remaining impact on life insurers themselves could be modest, because mortality for people with life insurance and annuities appears to be close to the pre-pandemic normal and life insurers have built padding for COVID effects into product assumptions and pricing.

State-by-state variations: The numbers here exclude results for Iowa, because uneven data flow threw off its numbers for the last week of 2023.

All of the numbers reflect how many hospitals are still sending in numbers and how many days per week they send in numbers. Because the number of hospitals providing data is falling, the current numbers are not easy to compare with numbers reported before 2023.

For the rest of the United States, the total working-age hospitalization count increased by 5.5% between the week ending Dec. 30 and the latest week.

But the latest count was up from just 1,486 for the week ending July 1, and the week-over-week increase was much higher in some states than in others.

Although counts fell in California and Pennsylvania, they increased by 15% or more in other big states, including Colorado, Florida, Georgia and New York.

Deaths: The earliest available COVID death counts are for people of all ages, not just for the working-age adults who might be most likely to have significant amounts of life insurance and to be setting up retirement savings arrangements.

Excluding Iowa, the number of COVID-19 deaths reported by hospitals fell to 758 for the latest week. That was down from 787 for the previous week, but it was up from 381 for the week ending July 1.

At this point, at the U.S. hospitals providing data, about 20% of all adults admitted with COVID are in the 20-59 age group. Those hospitals are reporting about one COVID-related death of an individual of any age for every nine inpatient hospital admissions of a working-age patient with COVID.

Credit: VILevi/Adobe Stock

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