12 Worst States for Adult COVID-19 Hospitalization Increases Now

COVID-19 looked as if it might be fading away in June, and then it flared up in July. Hospitals told the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that they admitted an average of 7,217 adults with confirmed cases of COVID-19 per week in July, up 9.5% from the average in June, according to the latest HHS COVID-19 hospitalization data. August is getting off to a bad start: Hospitals admitted 10,182 adults with confirmed COVID-19 during the week ending Aug. 5. COVID-19 admissions have increased by 62% since the week ending June 30, which was the best week since August 2020, when public health officials developed the current hospitalization tracking strategy. For a look at the 12 states with the biggest adult COVID-19 hospital admissions increases between June and July, see the gallery above. For numbers for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, see the table below.

What It Means

The federal COVID-19 public health emergency has expired, and HHS and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have stopped tracking many streams of COVID-19 data. The total number of hospitalizations and deaths is much lower than it was in 2020 and 2021. But the virus that causes COVID-19 is still out there, and it continues to add uncertainty to any financial plan that depends on estimates of a client's life expectancy.

Death Statistics

Another indicator — the early death count total that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses to determine whether the country is having an epidemic — has looked bad all year and has continued to look bad in recent weeks. The latest period with firm numbers is the 4-week period that ended July 15. During that period, the country averaged 53,070 deaths per week from all causes, including COVID-19 and the effects of COVID-19 on the health care system and economy. That was just 0.7% lower than the average recorded during the comparable period in 2022, and it was 7.9% higher than the average recorded during the comparable period in 2019. If the total U.S. death rate stayed about 8% higher than the pre-pandemic normal for an entire year, that would translate into the country recording about 200,000 extra deaths.