{"id":805981,"date":"2020-04-02T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=381296"},"modified":"2020-04-02T11:30:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-02T17:30:00","slug":"letter-to-the-editor-hospital-health-officials-must-release-better-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/letter-to-the-editor-hospital-health-officials-must-release-better-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to the editor: Hospital, health officials must release better data"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"43.856052344602\">\n<p>On April 1, the Summit Daily News published a story titled, \u201cSummit County reports 8 new coronavirus cases, 34 in total.\u201d The story noted \u201ca total of 27 individuals have been hospitalized since the first case arrived \u2026 March 5.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So, 27 coronavirus sufferers hospitalized. Clear enough. Then came these these two sentences:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThat number includes individuals who were admitted with COVID-19 symptoms but tested negative.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cNeither the hospital nor public health officials have released the current number of individuals hospitalized with symptoms.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, the actual number of coronavirus hospitalizations is not 27. It is fewer than 27, maybe far fewer. We can\u2019t find out. Neither the hospital nor Summit County officials will say. And they won\u2019t even say how many are hospitalized right now.<\/p>\n<p>These gaps are not trivial. Together, they make it impossible to know how much stress the virus is actually placing on St. Anthony Summit Medical Center. We know it\u2019s not 27 hospitalizations, but what is it? How many have been released?<\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col\">\n<div class=\"row sd-donation p-0\">\n<div class=\"col-xl-4 p-2\">\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/03\/SDN-logo-white-1.png)\" class=\"p-0 mt-2 mb-2 h-75 text-center rocket-lazyload\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/03\/SDN-logo-white-1.png\" class=\"logo m-0 p-0 invisible\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/03\/sdn-banner-paypal.jpg)\" class=\"col-xl-8 p-3 text-center rocket-lazyload\">\n<h3 class=\"d-inline mr-3\">Support Local Journalism<\/h3>\n<p><button class=\"btn d-inline\" type=\"button\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/donate\/?utm_source=article&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_campaign=donation&amp;utm_term=&amp;utm_content=mid-article\">Donate<\/a><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Recall that the primary justification for stay-at-home orders and business closures is a need for \u201cflattening the curve\u201d of COVID-19 infections so as to prevent a tsunami of hospital admissions. Are we succeeding or not?<\/p>\n<p>This is a terribly important matter to clear up. Until we know how St. Anthony\u2019s is actually doing, we cannot know whether we are getting closer to a reopening of our local businesses or further away.<\/p>\n<p>This blackout is not the fault of the Summit Daily. I am persuaded that staff has been pushing to get this information. It seems they are running up against a brick wall of bureaucracy.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, this is not a hard-to-fix problem. Summit County and hospital officials, please just provide the numbers. Or tell us why you won\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div readability=\"11.338785046729\">\n<div class=\"col-xl-7 pt-3 pb-4 sd-4 pl-4\" readability=\"17.745882352941\"> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.summitdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/03\/SDN-logo-white-1.png\" class=\"logo\"><\/p>\n<p><strong>As a Summit Daily News reader, you make our work possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Now more than ever, your financial support is critical to help us keep our communities informed about the evolving coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having on our residents and businesses. Every contribution, no matter the size, will make a difference.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Your donation will be used exclusively to support quality, local journalism.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p> <button class=\"btn\" type=\"button\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/donate\/?utm_source=article&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_campaign=donation&amp;utm_term=&amp;utm_content=below-article\">Donate<\/a><\/button><\/div>\n<p> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/opinion\/letter-to-the-editor-hospital-health-officials-must-release-better-data\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On April 1, the Summit Daily News published a story titled, \u201cSummit County reports 8 new coronavirus cases, 34 in total.\u201d The story noted \u201ca total of 27 individuals have been hospitalized since the first case arrived \u2026 March 5.\u201d So, 27 coronavirus sufferers hospitalized. Clear enough. Then came these these two sentences: \u201cThat number [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-805981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-17 11:49:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}