10 Worst States for December Working-Age COVID-19 Hospitalization Increases

Everyone seems to have a bit of a cough, and no one is going to the hospital — except that, actually, the number of adults going to the hospital with COVID-19 and other viral infections is going up. About 5,798 U.S. residents ages 20 through 59 went to the hospital with confirmed cases of COVID-19 during the week ending Wednesday, Dec. 7, up 38% from the number who entered the hospital with COVID-19 during the week ending Wednesday, Nov. 9, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hospitalization data. For all adults, the number of COVID-19-related hospital admissions increased 24.5%, to 62,009. For a look at the 10 hardest-hit states, ranked in terms of month-over-month changes, see the slideshow gallery. For data on all 50 states and the District of Columbia, see the table below.

Why It Matters

Everyone wants to get back to normal, but the mortality and longevity estimates that financial professionals use in a wide range of insurance and retirement planning activities may still be shaky. In the quarter ending Sept. 30, for example, the overall U.S. death rate for people ages 25 through 64 was still about 11% than it was in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic started.

The Context

States and hospitals are often slow to send COVID-19 data to the CDC. That makes using the COVID-19 numbers for the latest week difficult. The early December COVID-19 hospitalization figures translate into a hospitalization rate of about 19 per 100,000 for all U.S. residents and a rate of about 5 per 100,000 for adults in the 20-59 age group. Increases in COVID-19 deaths tend to lag behind increases in hospitalizations, and current U.S. COVID-19 death counts are still much lower than they were during the modest summer surge. CDC information about the effects of other infectious diseases, such as influenza, is more limited. One major respiratory disease tracking program, U.S. Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network, changed its "influenza-like illness" definitions in October 2021. That means using ILINet data to make year-over-year comparisons is difficult. But another flu data collection effort, the Influenza Hospitalization Surveillance Network's flu hospitalization tracking program, shows that this is already a terrible flu season. The flu hospitalization tracking program, which collects data from hospitals in about 70 counties in 10 states, says the flu hospitalization rate has soared to 26 per 100,000 U.S. residents, up from a typical flu hospitalization rate of fewer than 3 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents. Early December flu hospitalization rates are about 13 per 100,000 for U.S. adults ages 18 through 49 and about 26 per 100,000 for U.S. adults ages 50 through 64. The flu numbers mean that, at this point, the flu appears to be causing more serious illness than COVID-19, and a much higher rate of serious illness than the flu itself has caused in recent years. But making a comparison between the impact of COVID-19 and the impact of flu on working-age people is difficult because of the lack of detailed, comprehensive flu hospitalization data.

The States

At the state level, working-age COVID-19 hospitalization percentage changes between early November and early December ranged from a decrease of about 29% in Vermont, up to an increase of 375% in another New England state. The working-age hospitalization count increased by more than 10% in all but six states. The CDC flu tracking map shows that flu activity is at a high or a very level in most states except for Alaska, Hawaii, Michigan, West Virginia and Vermont, and is especially high in California and Texas, two states that are experiencing a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations.