12 States Where COVID-19 Hospitalizations Spiked Last Week

The U.S. COVID-19 hospitalization rate is continuing to climb. The number of adults hospitalized with confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the week ending Aug. 25 — the day before hospitals reported their latest numbers to the U.S. Disease Control and Prevention — reached 16,951. That was far below the peak of about 147,000 recorded in mid-January 2022. But the latest hospitalization count is almost 17% higher than the count recorded a week earlier, and it's 90% higher than the count recorded four weeks earlier, according to CDC data released Monday. For a look at the 12 hardest-hit states, where the adult COVID-19 hospitalization counts increased by at least 28.5% in the latest week, see the gallery above. For the Aug. 25 numbers, Aug. 18 numbers and July 29 numbers for all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, see the chart below.

What It Means

COVID-19 case counts, hospitalization rates and death counts are still much lower than they have been throughout most of the period since around March 2020, when the pandemic began infecting large numbers of Americans. Some public health experts have suggested that either Eris, the COVID-19 variant now dominating the infection data in the United States, or the newly noted, highly mutated BA.2.86 variant could be responsible for the recent surge. First Lady Jill Biden tested positive for COVID-19 Monday, students in much of the country are returning to school, and financial professionals trying to make plans that include life expectancy forecasts still have to add extra disclaimers and uncertainty factors to their work.