Indiana in third place for worst hospitalization rate in U.S

INDIANA-- According to a new analyzed data report from IndyStar, Indiana sits in third place out of all 50 states, having the highest COVID-19 hospitalization rates per 100,000 Hoosiers.

“We were seeing us kind of where as other states were maybe not seeing as the proportion of people in their hospitals rise as fast, we were going up in ranks and then finally we published a story last week, we were in the top 6 and then when we checked the data earlier this week we found ourselves in behind only one state, South Dakota,” IndyStar analyst and data journalist said.

State data shows that on Tuesday, close to 3,500 Hoosiers were sitting in the hospital with COVID complications, and Indiana was in second place. However, moving down a notch on Wednesday, doesn’t take away from the steady increase the state is seeing.

“Even though we are not second, we’re still seeing that rate rise and we’re still seeing hospitalizations rise and we’re still seeing deaths happening. So, I think these are all creative ways to look at the problem but the overarching message is that these are some very concerning trends,” Hopkins said.

One of the analysts, Emily Hopkins said they’ve been collecting data since the beginning of the pandemic, and when hospitalizations spiked in November, analyzing the data became more frequent.

“What’s really valuable about the analysis that we did is that it puts all of the states on a level playing field,” Hopkins said. “The states are by far not equally distributed population wise, so we really wanted to understand how, what the proportion of our population was hospitalized whether that was larger or small.”

Hopkins said that aside from providing a state perspective on where we stand, another goal is to hopefully help people make better decisions.

“If you see that things are a little bit worse here than almost any other state then you may might make different personal decisions, you may put that mask on more vigilantly, you may warn your family members that have or existing conditions and say hey this is getting really serious we should consider this. And it may have a policy impact too, who knows,” Hopkins said.

Hopkins also said that she doesn’t believe the numbers we are seeing include holiday hospitalizations yet, but that it may be just right around the corner.