CDC Data Shows COVID Hospitalizations Down: ‘Not so Unexpected’

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta on April 23, 2020. (Tami Chappell/AFP via Getty Images)

After a summer of slightly increasing COVID-19 hospital admissions, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that hospitalizations have declined for a second straight week.

For the week ending on Sept. 23, hospitalizations were down 3.1 percent, according to the CDC. A week before, they were down 4.3 percent, it shows.

The agency’s figures show that visits to the emergency department for COVID-19 are down about 11.7 percent for the same most recent week. They were down 19.3 percent for the week before that.

Although some media outlets and health officials had claimed that COVID-19 was surging over the late summer period, the CDC’s historical trends show that the increase was far smaller than previous waves of the virus.

Responding to cases rising in August, Dr. Shira Doron, chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine, told ABC News that the recent “upswing is not a surge; it’s not even a wave.” The doctor added, “What we’re seeing is a very gradual and small upward trajectory of cases and hospitalizations, without deaths really going along, which is great news.”

The recent drop in hospitalizations puts the United States at levels seen in March 2023, the data shows.

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“Signs point to the fact that the increase that we saw late summer is now subsiding,” Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, told ABC News on Thursday. “That’s not so unexpected given that we’ve seen previous seasons where you get this smaller summer peak, possibly driven by people being indoors, kids coming back to school post-vacation.”

According to the CDC data, reported deaths from COVID-19 are increasing. However, medical officials told ABC News that they generally lag behind cases and hospitalizations and will soon decline.

The CDC stopped posting daily data about COVID-19 hospitalizations, cases, and deaths earlier this year as the federal public health emergency ended in May.

CDC Report Released

However, the CDC released a report on Thursday asserting that COVID-19 remains a “continued public health threat,” namely impacting adults aged 65 and older.

“Most adults aged ≥65 years who were hospitalized with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result were likely admitted because of COVID-19 illness and, among these, a substantial proportion had severe outcomes, including ICU admission, receipt of invasive mechanical ventilation, and in-hospital death,” the report said.

The report said that adults who have an “increased risk” for COVID-19-related hospitalization, such as seniors, “should reduce their risk for severe COVID-19” by getting vaccines and “seeking prompt outpatient antiviral treatment after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result.” It also recommended “adopting measures to reduce risk for contracting COVID-19.”

Sen. J. D. Vance as seen in a file photo. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Mandates?

The latest CDC figures comes as some hospitals, county governments, and other institutions have mandated masking requirements. For example, multiple counties in California mandated that health care workers wear masks while on the job, and one recently issued a mandate requiring health care staff to either get vaccinated or wear a mask at work.

Contra Costa, Sonoma, Alameda, and San Mateo counties issued mask orders for health care staff in hospitals and other care facilities last month, while San Luis Obispo County’s chief health officer, Dr. Penny Borenstein, said last week she will issue a mask-or-vaccinate mandate for staff. Those mandates will go into effect starting Nov. 1, 2023, and will end on April 30, 2024.

“This health officer order is something that I’ve been doing for over a decade. In a sense, we’re going back to the pre-COVID days. This year, it seemed natural to add COVID because obviously, that’s a big respiratory disease that we’re dealing with,” Dr. Borenstein said Monday, according to a local news report.

At the same time, since August, several hospitals in upstate New York, Massachusetts, and California implemented a mask mandate. At least one elementary school in Maryland also made masking a requirement for a kindergarten class, drawing nationwide outrage.

With the return of mandates, several Republican officials have sounded the alarm.

Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told a press conference that his state wouldn’t reimplement the mandates. His 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, separately released a video on social media calling on Americans to resist COVID-19 rules, which he described as tyrannical.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) in September introduced a rule that would bar federal agencies from issuing mask mandates, but it was later blocked in the Senate by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). At the same time, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) did the same in the House, although it hasn’t been considered yet.

Two weeks later, Mr. Vance told the Washington Examiner that he believes there is still a path forward for a ban on federal mask rules.

“We’re working on a number of different angles to actually try to get it passed, or some version of it passed,” he said. “I was really disappointed that the [unanimous consent] was blocked.”