COVID ICU Bed Usage Down From 2020 Despite Recent Upward Trend

The number of intensive care unit (ICU) hospital beds in use for COVID-19 patients is up from the number of beds in use this summer, but overall, the country has seen a decrease in COVID-19 ICU bed usage from December of last year.

According to information from Johns Hopkins University, which uses data from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for the week of December 6 to December 12, 14,952 ICU beds are in use for COVID-19 patients. Overall, 78 percent of ICU beds in the U.S. are being used, according to the Johns Hopkins University information.

The number of ICU beds currently in use for COVID-19 patients is up from the summer, as the graph shows below 10,000 ICU beds occupied for COVID-19 patients throughout most of July. However, the numbers from the most recent week show a decrease from the same time in 2020.

According to the information on the university's webpage, during the week of December 7 to December 13, 2020, there were 25,507 ICU beds in use for COVID-19 patients.

Despite a rise in ICU bed use for COVID-19 patients, the percentage of ICU beds occupied for all patients has remained around the same since December 2020.

While the U.S. overall has seen a decrease in the number of ICU beds in use for COVID-19 patients, some states have seen a slight increase.

According to data from HHS, states such as Michigan, New Hampshire and Colorado currently have over 30 percent of ICU beds in use for COVID-19 patients. Data from Johns Hopkins shows that these three states have also seen a rise in the number of ICU beds in use for COVID-19 patients over the past week when compared to the same week span in 2020.

While speaking with Newsweek on Thursday, Brian Brasser, the Chief Operating Officer for Spectrum Health in Michigan pointed to unvaccinated residents and the Delta variant as a reason for the recent rise in COVID-19 ICU hospitalizations in the state.

On December 14, 2020, the first COVID-19 vaccine was administered in the U.S. Since then, COVID-19 vaccines have been made widely available to different age groups. Now, 60 percent of the U.S. population is considered to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"I think what's different now, thankfully we have the vaccines or the numbers would be much, much higher," Brasser told Newsweek. "Behaviors are a bit different. The pandemic fatigue is real and much of society is back to normal in so many different ways."

As COVID-19 ICU bed usage has been on an upward trend over the past few months, but down overall from 2020, Brasser explained that without the widely available vaccine the situation "would be so much worse."

According to Brasser, across Spectrum Health's 14 hospitals, 86 percent of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and 93 percent of COVID-19 patients in the ICU are unvaccinated.