Only 2% of all patients hospitalized in 2020 were hospitalized for Covid-19?
This figure comes from a report by ATIH, an agency compiling statistics, as the doctor Martin Blachier advanced on LCP on Tuesday.
Caution, however, in the face of this figure.
It smooths data over the whole year, as the Covid-19 hit in waves.
Martin Blachier, relying on this report, also argued that “Covid patients represented 5% of all patients treated in intensive care units”.
They were 11% according to this report and were hospitalized on average for almost 16 days in intensive care.
This request for verification was sent to us by readers.
Only 5% of patients in intensive care and 2% of all patients hospitalized in 2020 were due to Covid-19?
These striking figures were put forward by doctor Martin Blachier on the LCP stage on Tuesday.
Since then, the sequence is repeated on social networks and you have been several readers to ask us to verify these percentages.
Martin Blachier explains that he relies on a report from the technical agency for information on hospitalization (ATIH), an agency dependent on the Ministry of Health responsible, in particular, for collecting data from health establishments.
"You [there] read as well as during the year 2020, Covid patients represented 5% of all patients treated in intensive care units, he says on the set of The Parliamentary Channel .
You read on a little bit and you read that Covid patients represented 2% of hospitalized patients during this year 2020. "
He qualifies his remarks by noting that “Covid hospitalizations are a little longer than standard hospitalizations” and that “the phenomenon is spread over time”.
FAKE OFF
This report, published in October, is available online.
Its authors themselves note that the pandemic has severely disrupted hospitals.
Thus they write in the first page of the report: "In 2020, the health crisis induced by the COVID-19 pandemic has had a strong impact on the activity of health establishments".
This figure of 2% appears on page two of the report: "Covid patients represent 2% of all patients hospitalized during the year 2020, all hospital fields combined", specifies ATIH.
This figure, however, should be recontextualized: it is valid for the entire territory, saying nothing of regional differences.
Alsace had been hard hit by the first wave.
Likewise, this figure does not take into account all hospitalizations for Covid-19, as the authors of the report write. Patients who began to be hospitalized at the end of 2020 in the services for the management of acute pathologies and short stays but whose hospitalization continued in 2021 were not taken into account. This has the effect of artificially lowering the hospitalization figures for December 2020, while the epidemic was still circulating at the time in a high way, according to Public Health France.
This figure of 2%, presented for the whole of 2020, is also not indicative of the seasonality of the virus.
The first wave began in March 2020, with a surge in hospitalizations starting in mid-March, meaning hospitalization figures for January and February were lower.
This virus has experienced waves and peaks of contamination, during which hospital services were more in demand.
Thus, "the daily number of hospitalized Covid patients was greater than 30,000 during the period from March 30 to April 16, 2020", note the authors of the report.
This threshold of 30,000 was also crossed, at a minimum, between November 9 and December 17.
Conversely, less than 5,000 patients were hospitalized each day for this reason in July and August.
As for Covid-19 patients admitted to intensive care, they represented 11% of total hospitalizations in this service, and not 5% as announced by Martin Blachier and other commentators.
This 5% figure corresponds to critical care hospitalizations, which include intensive care, intensive care and continuing care services.
Sign of the crisis, the patients remained on average nearly 16 days in intensive care, against 11 days in 2019 for those who suffered from the flu.
In addition, "nearly one day of hospitalization in the intensive care unit in five was devoted to the care of COVID-19 patients", add the authors of the report.
Health
Coronavirus: Understand everything about the (new) vaccine recall campaign
Media
Report information that you think is false to the "Fake Off" team of "20 Minutes"
Fake off
Covid 19
Coronavirus
Society
Hospitalization
0 comment
0 share
Share on Messenger
Share on Facebook
Share on twitter
Share on Flipboard
Share on Pinterest
Share on Linkedin
Send by Mail
To safeguard
A fault ?
To print