Allegheny county + PA hospitalization thread: Today's case numbers are out and high: +1166 county, +11972 state. Given how noisy it is, it's helpful to average it out a bit. (down in thread). Allegheny County hospitalizations +20 to 846, ICU +9 to 239.

Statewide cases jumped 11,972; @StormFreak2 's thread has nice observations about Thursdays often being highest (linked in next tweet). Hospitalizations in PA are +25 to 5877 and ICU is +27 to 1218, about 170 over usual free capacity.

In the last 7 days, Allegheny County has averaged reporting 875 new cases. Previous week was 651; then 565; then 473; then 305. While that growth supports what we're seeing in hospitalization growth, the raw numbers are low and suggest we're under-testing. https://twitter.com/StormFreak2/status/1337033156315275264

because the ratio of hospitalized pts to cases is dropping. While that could be due to pts coming from surrounding counties, some of it is hiding in the very high positivity rate: we're just missing a lot of cases. Recall state reports negatives weirdly: https://twitter.com/dave_andersen/status/1336689857947705346

But I expect that when positivity numbers come out today we'll continue to see them be high. Even with the strange accounting the state uses, a big positivity increase tells us we're not doing enough testing. Statewide week-to-week cases have also grown.

Growth in cases/day hints my forecasted hospitalizations yesterday will be low; this rate of cases would land us at 6700 folks hospitalized, but it's also possible we'll start to see fewer hospitalizations per case, and that's bad news.

For example: https://twitter.com/StormFreak2/status/1337033156315275264
Fayette County reported 267 new cases, but we noted yesterday that their hospital system is filling. Not only do they have no ICU beds, they're down to 16 medical/surgical beds free (Dec 1 they had 34). So expect to see some decrease there.

Counties with +Covid ICU cases and no free ICU beds today: Tioga, Jefferson, McKean, Carbon, Clearfield, Fayette. Lehigh county is getting stretched and looks to get worse, with 54 ICU cases and only 6 free beds, and 7 day avg new cases rising.

I've got nothing better to say than yesterday's encouragement:
https://twitter.com/dave_andersen/status/1336693339924664320

Be safe.