The state of New York is adjusting how it will report Covid-19 hospitalization rates as the infectious omicron variant sweeps through the Empire State.

Background: New York has experienced some of the highest Covid-19 hospitalization rates since the beginning of the pandemic. The reporting associated with hospitalization rates raised some eyebrows when patients would be admitted to hospitals for non-Covid related issues but then test positive and add to the hospitalization rate.

What Happened: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says now hospitals must disclose if that patient was admitted for Covid-19 symptoms or for another issue.

“So we’re looking at a critical moment, but we’re going to start asking some questions. We talked about the hospitalizations. I have always wondered, we’re looking at the hospitalizations of people testing positive in a hospital,” Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday. “Is that person in the hospital because of COVID or did they show up there and are routinely tested and showing positive and they may have been asymptomatic or even just had the sniffles.”

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“Someone is in a car accident, they go to the emergency room, they test positive for COVID while they’re there. They’re not there being treated for COVID.” (per Fox News)

“I just want to always be honest with New Yorkers about how bad this is. Yes, the sheer numbers of people infected are high, but I want to see whether or not the hospitalizations correlate with that,” she said.

What Republicans: Recently, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also pushed for a similar move in the Sunshine State.

“I think that’s an important distinction to make when you have a variant like omicron which is much more widespread,” DeSantis said. “You are going to have people who get into a car accident and go into the emergency room. They’re swabbing everybody, and you’re going to have people that have incidental positives.” (per Fox News)

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