In previous work, we took an in-depth look at death from COVID-19, established its rapid rise as a leading cause of death and found that its death figures and rates better align with our longtime #1 killer — heart disease — than the flu. But obviously death is the most extreme possible outcome of COVID-19. Since the pandemic began, one of the leading concerns has been overcrowded hospitals and ERs. For this post, we’re turning our attention to COVID-19 hospital discharges and ER visits in 2020 and comparing them to those of heart disease and the flu, as well as other leading causes of ER and hospital visits between 2016 and 2020.

Below, we’re looking at the total number of hospital discharges and ER visits related to COVID-19 and heart disease in 2020, and the flu in 2020, 2019 and 2013 in the 11-county area only. Why three years of flu? Overall, 2020 was a light flu year, so we looked at the previous year’s data, as well as data reflecting the 2012-2013 flu season, which was the worst in the past decade on a national level.

The chart shows that both ER visits and hospital discharges for COVID-19 far surpassed those of the other illnesses.

The next chart looks at both hospital discharges and ER visits per 100,000 population, with the 11-county area represented by solid bars and Georgia represented by a patterned fill. Here, there are some subtle differences from what we’ve become accustomed to when looking at data related to COVID-19. While COVID-19 still surpasses the other illnesses for hospital discharge and ER visits, we can also see that:

1. COVID-19 and all years of the flu have higher age-adjusted ER visit rates than hospital discharge rates. This is flipped for heart disease, which has higher hospital discharge rates than ER visit rates.
2. Statewide, the 2019 flu ER visit rate did approach the COVID-19 ER visit rate in 2020. This does not hold true for the 11-county area, however. Locally, the age-adjusted COVID-19 ER visit rate in 2020 was a third higher than it was for the flu in 2019.
3. Overall, flu-related ER visits do come closer to COVID-19 rates than heart disease rates do. But with the exception of the 2019 flu statewide, they still don’t come close to mirroring COVID-19.
4. When it comes to hospitalization, the nearest we get to COVID-19 in 2020 was heart disease in 2020.

The chart below can provide some sense of just how much of our hospital resources were devoted to COVID-19 relative to heart disease and the flu. In 2020, COVID-19 accounted for 3.5 percent of all hospital discharges locally, which is not even remotely comparable to the flu, which accounted for just 0.2 percent of discharges in 2013, 2019 and 2020. Again, we see we have to look at the state’s #1 killer to come even close to the percent of visits caused by an illness.

While it might be cold comfort, it is important to note that COVID-19 did not rank among the leading causes of age-adjusted hospital discharge and ER visit rates between 2016 and 2020 (it did, however, become a ranked cause of death). Those dubious distinctions went to septicemia (blood poisoning) and diseases of the musculoskeletal system (most commonly pain-related), respectively. Below, we’re looking at a set of charts comparing these rates in 2020 to that of COVID-19. They show that COVID-19 doesn’t exactly come close to the rates that septicemia and joint/muscle pain sent us to the hospital and ER — but it does hold its own on the number line.