Prairie State Wire

Mark Glennon, Wirepoints founder, took Illinois to task over its reporting of hospitalizations and resource availability information related to the COVID-19 outbreak in his April 6 article.

Wirepoints obtained an email that the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) sent to all hospitals in the state, directing them to begin releasing COVID-19 data.

Instead of publishing the number of new cases, which Glennon suggests is not a useful metric, he said hospitalization and available resource figures should be released and tracked for a more accurate picture of now and the future.

“All the models projecting risk of hospital overload and resources needed are useless if current, accurate numbers don’t go in. Junk in, junk out. Where exactly within Illinois is overload approaching? Which states need the most help? To answer those questions, you need to look at hospitalization rates and trends, empty capacity, available ventilators and such,” said Glennon. “Those numbers will also be essential when the time comes for making the difficult decision about when to lift the shutdown and get people back to work. If we do it too soon the curve could spike again and overload medical resources; wait too long and unnecessary, further damage to the economy will result.”

The numbers showed that the state had 11,502 available hospital beds, but only 806 in intensive care. The projection from the University of Washington showed there may be a shortage of 507 beds in the ICU at the peak of the disease.

In an April 3 press conference, before dodging a question about hospitalization data, saying it would be released when appropriate, Lightfoot spoke of a 40,000 bed shortfall for Chicago alone.

““Not 40,000 cases, but 40,000 people who require acute care in a hospital setting,” Lightfoot has said. “That number will break our healthcare system… This will push our city to the brink.” Wirepoints noted that the newly-released data showed the entire inventory of beds at 28,000, with only 9,300 beds needed statewide when COVID-19 peaks.

Aside from their not focusing on the correct figures, Glennon speculated that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Gov. Pritzker have shared inflated numbers for a variety of reasons, to alarming the public "to ensure they honor the social distancing rules" to attempting to get the most assistance they can from the federal government, or perhaps they are merely engaging in political drama.