12 Worst States for Working-Age Hospitalization Trends

The recent surge in U.S. hospital admissions for adults with COVID-19 might have peaked during the week ending Sept. 9, according to the latest hospitalization data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The total number of hospitalizations of adults ages 20 and older with confirmed COVID-19 fell 4%, to 19,499, between the week ending Sept. 9 and the latest week in the HHS data, which ended Sept. 16. For working-age adults, or adults ages 20 through 59, the total COVID-19 hospitalization count fell 9.2%, to 4,537. But the hospitalization count for working-age adults increased by 20% or more in 12 states. For a look at those states, see the gallery above. What it means: If the hospitalization rate for the current wave of COVID-19 cases continues to level off, the wave could lead to only a modest increase in life insurance claims and support the argument of retirement planners who believe that the life expectancy of an advisor's typical clients is still increasing. The data: For life insurers and retirement advisors wanting to know quickly whether they can stop including a COVID-19 uncertainty factor in clients' life expectancy estimates, one concern is that the end of the federal government's COVID-19 public health emergency has led to a sharp decrease in the amount of hospitalization and mortality data being collected and a lack of detailed, comprehensive, real-time data. The freshest COVID-19 hospitalization counts on the HHS and U.S. Centers for Disease Control Prevention websites are already 11 days old. The context: For U.S. working-age adults, the COVID-19 hospitalization total for the week ending Sept. 16 is a little lower than the count recorded for the previous week, and it's 49% lower than the count of 8,954 recorded for the comparable week in 2022. But the latest count is 37% higher than the count of 3,318 recorded four weeks earlier, for the week ending Aug. 19. The latest count is 213% higher than the count of 1,451 recorded for the week ending June 24, when the COVID-19 pandemic looked as if it might be close to ending.