Cuomo: 66 Percent of New Hospitalizations For Coronavirus Are From People Staying at Home

The preliminary data from 100 New York hospitals involving about 1,000 patients show that about 66 percent of new admissions for the coronavirus are from people who were staying at home and not venturing much outside. Governor Andrew Cuomo called that information “shocking.”

The next highest source of hospital admissions was from nursing homes at 18 percent.

CNBC:

“If you notice, 18% of the people came from nursing homes, less than 1% came from jail or prison, 2% came from the homeless population, 2% from other congregate facilities, but 66% of the people were at home, which is shocking to us,” Cuomo said.

“This is a surprise: Overwhelmingly, the people were at home,” he added. “We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home.”

Cuomo had all sorts of bad news from this initial study. He said that the majority of those admissions were either retired or unemployed. Overall, about 73 percent of the admissions were people over age 51.

Most of the new patients are from the New York City area with blacks and Hispanics making up the majority.

Cuomo said state health officials had thought a high percentage of people who were hospitalized would be essential employees, like health-care workers or city staff, who are still going to work.

“Much of this comes down to what you do to protect yourself. Everything is closed down, government has done everything it could, society has done everything it could. Now it’s up to you,” Cuomo said.

Here’s the Big Takeaway: ISOLATION DOES NOT PREVENT TRANSMISSION! While it probably helps to isolate oneself and one’s family, it’s certainly no guarantee against becoming infected.

That should be part of the calculus for ending the lockdown. While masks and hand sanitizers are valuable, as are social distancing measures, there are no simple answers to how to reopen the country. If people can become infected by items brought into the home or any contact with outsiders, there’s nothing anyone can do about that. We’d have to lock everyone away and not allow anything from the outside world in people’s houses.