Are Hospitals Spreading the Virus?
Does admitting patients suspected of having COVID-19 to hospital increase the spread of the virus? That's one explanation for why the number of deaths in the Italian region of Veneto is so much lower than in Lombardy. As of Saturday, April 4th, Lombardy had a case fatality rate (CFR) of 17.6%, while Veneto's CFR was just 5.6%. The population of Lombardy is 10 million and Veneto 4.9 million, but Lombardy had recorded 8,656 Covid deaths by April 4th, while Veneto had recorded 607. Part of the reason for this discrepancy is that the authorities have done much more testing and contact tracing in Veneto. But another reason may be that far fewer people suspected of having the virus have been admitted to hospital in Veneto. In Lombardy, 65% of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 were admitted to hospital at the start of the outbreak, while in Veneto only 20% of people were. The theory isn't that people diagnosed with the virus are more likely to die if admitted to hospital, but that the higher percentage of admissions in Lombardy meant non-COVID-19 patients and hospital staff were more likely to be infected and then infect others. A group of doctors from the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo wrote a paper for the New England Journal of Medicine setting out this theory ...
