During Pennsylvania’s first big COVID-19 wave, nearly 20% of hospital patients who had it died. That figure, from April of 2020, represents the peak in-hospital mortality rate for COVID-19 in Pennsylvania through the end of 2021.
The hospital mortality rate varied going forward, dropping to around 8% in July of 2020 and April of 2021, but rising above 13% during the winter surges of 2020 and 2021. It was nearly 15% as recently as late 2021.
The data comes from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, a state agency that collects health care information. The PHC4 doesn’t provide medical explanations for the data and things like variations in the mortality rate.
The figures cover the period from the start of COVID-19 related hospitalizations in early 2020 to the end of 2021. During that period, the highest number of hospitalizations in any month, about 25,000, took place in December of 2020.
The data show breathing ventilator use was highest in the spring of 2020, with about 16% of COVID-19 patients put on ventilators. The rate was about 11% in late 2021 as Pennsylvania faced another big wave of cases and hospitalizations.
The data, which can be read here, reflect various characteristics of COVID-19 patients such as age, sex and race.
During the final three months of 2021, nearly 40,000 people with COVID-19 were hospitalized. However, an unknown number tested positive for COVID-19 at the hospital, but may have been hospitalized for other reasons and not significantly affected by COVID-19.
A rose is placed on the casket of Gerald Welch, a Harrisburg school board member who died of COVID-19 in spring 2020. (Sean Simmers | ssimmers@pennlive.com, file)
During that period, 14.6% of the patients died in the hospital. The average hospital stay was 8.2 days. The hospitalizations included 770 people 18 or younger, with those patients having a 1.3% mortality rate and 6.1% needing ventilators.
The highest mortality rate involved people over 85, with 20% dying in the hospital. The most hospitalizations involved people 65-74, with nearly 9,000 hospitalized during the last three months of 2021, and about 18% dying.
Overall, more men than women ended up in the hospital with COVID-19; 16% of the men died, compared to 13% of women.
As of Aug. 1, Pennsylvania had a total of 46,164 COVID-19 deaths, according to tracking by Johns Hopkins University. The state was averaging 16 deaths per day as of early August, well below the peak of about 220 in early 2021.
In general, doctors say vaccination and improvements in treatment including new drugs that can prevent infected people from becoming severely ill have substantially decreased the chances of dying from COVID-19.
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