DENVER (KDVR) — As the subvariants of the omicron coronavirus variant continue to be dominant strains, Colorado’s health department is drilling down on its reporting of who is in the hospital because of COVID or just with it.
What’s known as incidental COVID, someone hospitalized for a different reason but happens to be positive for the virus, shot up when omicron first started to spread.
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is now distinguishing this caveat in its daily data dump.
CDPHE will now break down COVID hospital cases into five categories:
- Hospitalized for COVID
- Hospitalized with COVID
- Presumptive for COVID
- Presumptive with COVID
- Unknown
Hospitalized for COVID is defined by CDPHE if “one of the first two billing diagnosis codes includes ‘COVID-19,’ ‘pneumonia due to coronavirus disease 2019,’ or ‘pneumonia due to SARS-associated coronavirus.'”
Presumptive for COVID is defined as “if discharge diagnosis includes one of the less-specific COVID-19-related diagnosis codes,” or “the admission diagnosis code is used if the patient has not yet been discharged.”
With higher transmissibility and lesser impacts on health than previous variants like delta, COVID-related hospitalizations have risen in the last month.
